Million Little Things
by zeppx
Summary: Sam and Dean teach/show Cas the little things of humanity.
1. Chapter 1

This came to be due to the fact one of my friends was really, _really_ enjoying his Cocoa Pebbles while we were watching a collection of the Pixar shorts in the middle of the night. And I'd had the idea of Cas getting his whacked on from somewhere, so...it came to be this.

Enjoy!

* * *

There are many things Dean thinks he would never see. One of them being an angel of the Lord splayed out on the floor after an unnaturally big demon whacked him on the head with a big iron pipe. Said pipe had several sigils marked into and a distinct dent in the middle that resembled the shape of Cas' head.

"Dude, you okay?" Both Dean and Sam are kneeling by the angel, one brother on each side, Sam had used the distraction Cas had provided to retrieve the demon killing knife and send the bastard to wherever dead demons went.

Cas blinked up at Dean, eyes unfocused and a small trickle of blood making its way from his temple down his cheek.

"Dean?"

"Yeah Cas, you okay?" A long slow blink was directed at Dean, then, "My head hurts." Dean exchanged a look with Sam who had his _I'm very concerned what should we do_ face pointed at Dean, all furrowed brows and wrinkled forehead. Dean simply shrugged, he didn't know what to do, Cas had never really been injured before. Always got right back up after a hit, smirked when he was stabbed in the chest and walked through bullets like they were pieces of confetti being thrown at him, Dean had never seen someone able to knock Cas silly.

"Let's get you back to the hotel Cas." Dean took one of the angel's arms, Sam took the other, and together they managed to get him up on his feet. Cas swayed a little, blinked a few more times and said, "I will meet you there," and before either of them could protest Cas was gone.

"_Shit_!" Was out of Dean's mouth and two seconds later Cas was back, a few feet ahead of them, stumbling and Sam was there, catching him before he could go down again.

"You idiot Cas! You just got your bell rung, no flying while concussed!" Cas frowned at Dean as Dean took his arm again, slinging it over his shoulder while Dean wrapped an arm around Cas' waist. Another long blink then Cas' head was lolling to the other side, "Sam-" Cas stopped and stared up at Sam with the kind of intensity the angel used when he was trying to understand a pop culture reference.

"Uh, yeah Cas?"

"You have a very large and expressive forehead." Dean snorted, Sam rolled his eyes and they both said, "Whoa!" when Cas promptly passed out.

"So uh, hotel then?" Dean nodded and they managed to get Cas out of the house and into the Impala, "So what do you do with a concussed angel?" Sam asked once they were back at the hotel, Cas sprawled out on one of the beds.

"How should I know?"

"You know Cas better than me."

"Doesn't mean I know what to do with the guy when he decides it's time to experience his first concussion."

Dean tried waking Cas up after a few hours but Cas simply grumbled at him and rolled over. They managed to get him out of the trench coat, suit jacket and shoes and other than that, Cas didn't move at all.

Dean ordered pizza for them all, Sam started looking for another hunt or something on how to kill Lucifer, and they called Bobby to update him and watched TV.

In other words, Dean was bored by the time Cas decided to wake up.

"Hey Cas, how you feeling?" Cas blinked up at the brothers and slowly sat up, frowning and rubbing his forehead.

"Cas? You okay?" Sam was there again with his concerned face, giant hand on Cas' shoulder, steadying the angel when he swayed a little.

"I'm fine."

"You sure? You got kind of knocked silly." Cas looked over at Dean, nodded and looked down at himself, probably wondering what the hell had happened to his coats and shoes.

"I'm fine. Did you kill the demon?"

"Yeah, all taken care of."

"Good." They sat in awkward silence for a moment, Cas looking between Sam and Dean with a confused frown on his face. Sam finally stood and headed back for the laptop and Dean clapped his hands together and said, "I'm gonna hit the bar. Don't wait up for me ladies." Sam frowned and Cas flopped back onto the bed without the support of the brothers holding him upright.

"You gonna be okay Cas?"

"I'm fine Dean. Go." Dean nodded and was out the door and headed for the bar. He needed a stiff drink after all that, he wasn't used to seeing Cas hurt, didn't think he'd _ever_ see Cas hurt. Sure, he'd seen the angel with a few cuts and bruises but those were always gone and cleaned before they could even get back to the hotel to worry about it. He'd never seen Cas actually knocked stupid, he'd always managed to get right back up again, hell even being exploded hadn't kept the stubborn ass down.

Cas didn't deserve it, didn't deserve to know what pain felt like, to know sleep, unconsciousness, and wounds that took more than a few hours to close up. But he did and he was all because he'd given up everything for Dean.

So yeah, Dean needed a few drinks.

* * *

It was morning when Dean stumbled back to the hotel room, having slept in the Impala at the bar for the night. Too drunk to be able to drive the few blocks and too drunk to remember where the hotel was to begin with if he wanted to walk there.

He wasn't prepared for the sight that greeted him when he closed the door behind him. Both Sam and Cas were seated on the bed closest to the TV, Sam back against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of him. Cas was sitting on the end of the bed Indian style, at some point Sam had gotten him to change into a pair of Dean's sleep pants and one of Sam's old hoodies that had gotten too small for him somewhere along the line, he was hunched over a bowl of something and was staring intently at the TV.

"Uh…" Sam nodded over at Dean; Cas glanced at him, returned his attention to the TV and readjusted his hold on the spoon that was positioned between his long fingers.

"What are you guys doing?"

"We went out last night and got some movies and food to pass the time. Figured it'd be a good time to get Cas caught up on some pop culture." Cas popped the end of the spoon into his mouth, made a happy humming noise at whatever he'd just stuck in there but didn't let his attention stray from the TV.

"_What_ are you eating?" Cas' blue eyes finally turned on Dean, pulled the spoon from his mouth, chewed and looked down at the bowl in his lap, "Sam called them Cocoa Pebbles."

Dean turned his attention to Sam and said, "You're feeding an angel of the Lord _Cocoa Pebbles_?"

"Well he liked them more than the Cheerios and Wheaties. He's working through the second box already, seems the sweet tooth runs in the family."

Dean momentarily felt a little bad for bailing on them last night, he'd taken it upon himself to teach Cas about food, show him the awesomeness of pie and burgers and fries. It should have been him explaining movies and deciding what would be best for the angel to sample from the food supplies. His brother and angel seemed perfectly content though, sharing the bed and watching whatever movie was playing now.

Dean was just glad that the two were finally starting to get along, "So, what have you two watched?"

"Well, we started with _Star Wars_," Dean nodded his agreement with that choice and Sam continued, "But we had to turn it off, Cas kept saying how improbable it was and just got annoyed." Dean rolled his eyes and Sam shrugged, both turning to look at the angel as he popped another spoon full of Cocoa Pebbles into his mouth.

"Then we went with _50 First Dates_, just to see what he liked."

"Please tell me he didn't like it."

"Nope, he hated it."

"Good, because Adam Sandler is a douche."

"I did find him to be rather obnoxious, and his voice was grating." Cas mumbled around his spoon. Dean snorted and asked, "What else?"

"Found out he kind of likes the historical kind of movies. Watched _The DaVinci Code _and _National Treasure_."

"Seriously Cas?"

"He likes to mock the parts where they got everything wrong." Sam said, a big grin on his face. Dean's sad he missed that part of the evening, "Of course he does."

"I went to bed after that but he stayed up and watched throughout the night. He really likes the animated kid flicks."

"Seriously?"

"They have very meaningful messages." Cas put in, eyes still on the movie that Dean now recognized as one of the short films that Pixar put at the beginning of their movies.

"They make him laugh." Sam added, Dean looked over at him, eyebrows raised; in all their time with Cas, he had never heard him laugh, except the startled little huff of air that had come out when Dean had made the crack about witches.

"Well…chuckle." True to word, Cas started chuckling as the birds settled on their wire and started squeaking at each other.

"I always knew we got the baby angel." Dean muttered, eyeing the TV, he did have to admit the sounds the birds were making were pretty entertaining.

"What else does he like to eat?" Dean asked, turning away from the TV and turning his attention back to his brother. Sam shrugged and said, "We haven't tried too much. He doesn't like peanuts or mushrooms. Likes pizza and Cocoa Pebbles, oh…_not_ a fan of soda."

"Really?"

"It went up his nose, he _was_ enjoying the root beer, but after that experience he refused to give it a second shot."

"Aw, c'mon Cas, you gotta like root beer, root beer floats are the best!"

"It was highly unpleasant."

"You can't just give up on something just because you had one bad experience with it." Cas shot Dean a look that clearly said _wanna bet?_ Dean shook his head, waved at the TV and said, "Put aside the movie watching, I'm hungry." Cas actually _pouted_ and eyed his bowl, then turned his attention back to the Pixar clip, the birds had just been shot off the wire and their little feathers were circling down to Earth.

Clearly, Cas was choosing the route of ignoring Dean. Dean opened his mouth to get Cas moving, he could introduce the angel to the wonder of pancakes and bacon when Cas burst out into, Dean _really_ didn't want to call them giggles since Cas was in a _man's_ body, but they were truly hysterical little giggles. All because of some naked, squeaky toy sounding birds.

"Like I said, baby angel." Dean muttered, but he couldn't help the smile on his face and apparently neither could Sam. Cas curled in on himself, hovering over his bowl of cereal, shoulders shaking with his silent laughter, an occasional snort escaping. Dean felt his smile widening on its own as he went over and shut the TV off and clapped Cas on the shoulder, "C'mon Cas, let's get you into some jeans and introduce you to some pancakes."

Cas nodded, set the bowl aside and stood and grinned at Dean. Actually _grinned_, bright and wide, eyes crinkling, dimples appearing in his cheeks even a nose scrunch, which Dean would never admit to thinking was adorable but it was fucking _adorable_. Quite suddenly his night didn't seem so bad, the day doable and the apocalypse totally in the bag, Lucifer didn't stand a chance.

Cas moved away, accepted a pair of old jeans of Dean's from Sam and disappeared into the bathroom. Dean's smile faded, the room seemed a bit dimmer and Dean realized he was totally acting like a thirteen-year-old girl.

He was in trouble.


	2. Chapter 2

Well, since a lot of people asked for more, here's more! I do aim to please. I hope you guys like it, annnd…I'll add even more if you want, and I'm also up for suggestions if there's anything you'd like to see specifically, I will try my hardest to add it in there. And again, thank you to my crazy stalker friend for being an epic pain in my ass while I was writing this and giving me a constant stream of crap to rifle through until I found some inspiration to keep on going.

Also, this was written in the middle of a public library while waiting for my next class to start, so I didn't read it over like I probably should have. So I apologize for any mistakes or things that probably just don't make sense. I was being repeatedly poked and bickered at so my attention wandered every so often.

Hope you guys enjoy it anyway!

* * *

Cas was staring at his menu like it would hold the key to the universe and everything in it. Possibly even the location of God.

"Cas, its just pancakes."

"There are many different varieties of pancakes though." Dean couldn't really fault him there, there were a lot of different kinds of pancakes being served at this back roads little diner. Plain, with chocolate chips, with blueberries, strawberries, the choices were endless.

"Maybe you should just start off with plain. Oh, Sam! They have stuffed French toast here!" Sam's eyes peeked over the menu to look at Dean, he raised an eyebrow and Dean shrugged, he couldn't help that the breakfast choices were suddenly more endless than before. It was going to be a tough choice, and he didn't know what to introduce Cas to first, what the hell would the angel enjoy in the first place?

"I think plain pancakes are a safer route to take at the moment Dean." Sam said, lowering his menu, having made his choice. They both looked over at Cas who was still staring at his own menu, brow furrowed and eyes squinted like it was written in some foreign language that even Cas didn't know.

"Don't worry Cas, you'll like plain pancakes. You can try out all the different syrups that way." Cas nodded, closed the menu and folded his hands on top of it and looked around the diner. There wasn't much to look at, there was a trucker sitting at the counter drinking his coffee like it was his life source and a small family tucked into the corner at the other end. Their waitress looked tired and bored and the cooks in the back were talking loudly about a baseball game.

"So, you two watch any other movies last night?" Sam frowned, thinking about it while their waitress came over, filled up their coffee cups and took their orders of pancakes, eggs bacon and hash browns. Dean figured simple was better in these times.

"Oh, yeah. _Zombieland_ but other than that nothing else."

"And how do you feel about that one Cas?" They both turned to look at the angel who was sniffing at his coffee, paused before he took a sip, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth before saying, "Zombies." Like it was all he needed to say.

Which, yeah, nothing else really needed to be said. Who didn't like zombies? Apparently even stuffy angels of the Lord liked a good zombie flick.

"Never would have taken you for a zombie fan Cas. We'll have to educate you in the many different types of zombie movies."

"I look forward to it." Cas said, and then took a sip of hot, black coffee. Dean couldn't help the snort of laughter that escaped as his face screwed up in his apparent dislike of plain coffee.

"Add some creamer and sugar Cas." Sam said, smiling as he pushed it across the table. Cas eyed his coffee like it had personally set out that morning to make his life difficult before eyeing the creamer and sugar.

"Start out simple, one packet of sugar and well, creamer is universal." Dean dumped in a few little containers of creamer until the coffee was a light brown color and dumped in one packet of sugar. Cas watched it all with obvious fascination, moments like these always reminded Dean that underneath the badass warrior of God there was an endless supply of curiosity for everything around. Cas always wanted to know how something worked, why it worked like that, what its purpose was and why did people need it so much?

It was always why, why, why and Dean was always reminded of a young Sam asking endless questions of Dean about everything and anything.

Cas had never seemed like much of a warrior to Dean, especially standing next to Uriel or Gabriel. Hell, even Anna had seemed more badass. Cas just seemed innocent, curious and naïve, more interested in figuring out why things worked like they did instead of fighting. Sure Cas could fight, but he never seemed like he _wanted_ to fight.

Cas had worked his way through four more sugar packets while Dean had been off in his head, he came back though when Cas hummed happily and wrapped his fingers around his cup.

"Of course you're like Sam and you want your coffee to be more sugar and cream than coffee."

"Bite me, jerk."

"Whatever, bitch. You can't deny you spend five dollars on a damn cup of non-fat, skinny latte or whatthefuckever every time we come within five hundred feet of a Starbucks."

"What is Starbucks?" Cas asked, interrupting the bickering that was about to break out between the brothers. Sam opened his mouth, probably to promise to take Cas to one the next time they were in a larger city, but Dean cut him off by pointing his finger at Sam and saying, "No! You are not going to corrupt my angel with that shit!"

_His_ angel? Where the hell had that come from?

Sam was shooting Dean a knowing look and Cas was just oblivious as always, happily drinking his overly sweet coffee and watching as their waitress brought their breakfasts to the table.

"Alright Cas, let's see what we get to work with here." Dean leaned over, reaching for the rack of syrups, suddenly hyper aware of how warm Cas' shoulder was and how the angel didn't bother moving over or out of the way as Dean reached across him.

Dean really needed to get over himself.

"So, we have maple, everyone's favorite. Strawberry, blueberry and boysenberry. What the fuck is boysenberry?"

"It's a cross between a raspberry, blackberry and loganberry." Sam said, like it was common knowledge and Dean was an idiot for not knowing this.

"_Thank you_, what are you, a walking encyclopedia?" Sam rolled his eyes, snatched the maple syrup and poured a liberal amount over his pancakes. Cas gently took hold of the strawberry syrup and eyed the container it was in; Dean took it from him and poured a small amount on one of the pancakes.

"Go ahead and try that." Cas picked up his fork and cut into the pancake with it like he'd probably seen Dean and Sam do countless times and popped it into his mouth. He chewed, swallowed and looked over at Dean and then Sam who had both stopped to watch.

"Well?"

"It's…okay."

"Well, try another one then, until you find one that's more than okay." Cas nodded and proceeded on with the boysenberry, which according to him was less than okay, then came blueberry, which was better than the strawberry but still not quite good enough.

Soon as he tried the maple syrup it was a done deal, another happy hum escaped and he refused to the let the maple syrup container get more than a few inches away from his plate.

"Looks like a winner." Cas nodded at Dean and proceeded to enjoy his pancakes before sampling the eggs and deeming them "okay". He didn't enjoy the bacon and the hash browns were also "okay", then they added the ketchup and they got the same treatment as the pancakes.

They ate their breakfast in silence after they figured out what was and wasn't acceptable to Cas' picky palate. When they finished they headed back for the hotel room to pack everything up, "You gonna hang with us Cas?" Dean asked, watching as Cas wandered around the room, looking at nothing in particular. He was still wearing the jeans and hoodie from earlier and seemed perfectly content to keep on wearing them.

"I-yes."

"Good, we're heading to Bobby's, he said he thinks he found something about Lucifer that we should look into. He'd probably call you in anyway and the three of you can geek out over that shit while I get drunk." Sam rolled his eyes and Cas nodded, picked up his pile of clothes, which had been neatly folded at some point and placed on the small table.

He looked unsure of what to do about them so Dean took them from his hands and shoved them into his bag saying, "You can keep what you've got on, but if you ever feel like changing or anything I'll hang on to your suit."

"Thank you Dean."

"Not a problem. Casual is a good look for you dude." Cas looked down at himself and Dean had to fight to the urge to think about how jeans made Cas' ass look edible and how he just looked fucking adorable in Sam's hoodie which was too small for either brother but was slightly to big on Cas.

Dean didn't know where these thoughts were coming from suddenly, why he was thinking Cas was suddenly adorable and edible and whatever else, but he for some reason couldn't help it. And somehow, it wasn't freaking him the hell out either.

"Well come on then." Cas followed them out of the room, waited while they shoved their bags into the trunk and climbed into his spot in the backseat behind Sam.

Dean didn't know when the backseat had become 'Cas' spot' but it had somewhere along the line. Sam always in the passenger seat, Dean driving and Cas watching them bicker over music, food and whatever else from his place in the back.

He didn't know why, didn't know how and didn't know when, but he was oddly okay with it.

Cas didn't seem to mind either, judging by the small smile that was on his face as the Impala roared to life and the three of them headed for Bobby's.


	3. Chapter 3

I apologize if parts of this seem rushed, I wanted to get it written before my muse went on strike again. Still trying to write something for my little 'verse but it's just sitting there half written for the last few days, it just won't come out, which is annoying. So yeah, I just wanted to get this out before it went away again, there's my reasoning for the rushedness of this fic.

I also apologize for blabbering on about zombie movies. I'm excited for my own zombie movie marathon happening later today before Supernatural returns to us finally (I can't even sit still. _Especially_ since I read about what's going to happen in 6.15 later this month) Ugh, the wait.

ANYWAY. I hope you demanding (kidding) people enjoy this. Once again, any suggestions are welcome! The end part of this fic comes from a suggestion, so I'm not kidding here! I _will_ use your suggestions!

I aim to please. Or just want your attention. Whatever.

Read on!

* * *

Dean expected Cas to be one of those people that once asleep were the type to shift towards the warmth of another person. He couldn't have been more wrong though.

When he woke up in the morning, expecting the angel to be suctioned to his side, only to find Cas exactly where he'd been left in the middle of the night, Dean couldn't help but feel a flash of disappointment. Though Cas did look comfortable in his sleep.

Well, not sleep, Cas had called it a 'restful meditation', since of course angel's don't sleep. It was sleep to Dean though, since Cas was sprawled on his stomach, one leg hitched up to where his knee was pressing into Dean's hip, the other stretched out behind him, a hint of toes peeking out from underneath the blanket down near the bottom of the bed. One arm was folded up underneath the pillow his head was resting on while the other hand was tucked up underneath Cas' chin, his mouth was open and his breathing was deep and slow, his body warm and heavy with sleep.

Restful meditation his ass, Cas was passed the hell out. Would probably do him some good though, eight hours of solid sleep never hurt anyone. Sam was still snoring softly on the other bed, all loose limbs and drool.

Pizza boxes, beer bottles and cans of root beer were strewn about the room still, the TV in the corner was still showing the main menu of the last DVD they had watched the night before. They'd stopped for the night on their way to Bobby's, Dean had been intent to introduce Cas to as many zombie movies as he could in one night, and Sam had insisted on furthering the education in food and had somehow convinced Cas to give soda a second try.

Turns out the angel likes pepperoni, pineapple, sausage, olives and green peppers on his pizza. He didn't like the onions, mushrooms (they knew that one already), or jalapenos though, which was slightly disappointing to Dean but at least the angel liked meat on his pizza unlike Sam who had picked off everything but the mushrooms, green peppers and pineapple. And he called Cas a fussy eater.

Cas didn't like Mountain Dew, _that color doesn't look natural Dean,_ Dr. Pepper or Fresca. He liked Coke, Sprite and above all else, root beer, Dean had to remember to introduce him to the joys of a root beer float later that day.

They had watched a good portion of movies too, Cas insisting on watching _Zombieland_ again before they moved onto _Night of the Living Dead_, _Dawn of the Dead _and _Day of the Dead_. Cas had commented on how uncreative the names of the movies were, but overall he'd enjoyed them all, informing the brothers that _Zombieland_ was still his favorite though. Dean didn't argue, even though the other movies were classics in their own rights, _Zombieland_ was pretty awesome.

Cas muttered something in his 'restful meditation' and slung his leg over Dean's, nuzzled into his pillow and let out a content sigh. Dean snorted, looked around the room, looked at the clock to see it was still only eight and decided some more sleep could be had before they got back on the road.

By the time all three of them were up, showered and packed it was nearly lunch time so they made their way for the diner next door to the hotel, Dean talking Cas into trying a hamburger before they made for Bobby's.

They ordered their food, Sam ordering Cas a strawberry milkshake for him to try. By the time their food arrived, Dean and Sam were discussing what Bobby could have come across and Cas was busy playing with the salt and pepper shakers, moving them around the table as if he were fascinated by how they slid over the surface of their table. Dean took the saltshaker from him to salt up their fries and said, "Dig in Cas. Enjoy man."

Dean watched from the corner of his eye as Cas sampled his fries, nodded his approval of those and took a bite out of his hamburger. He chewed a few times, made a face and stopped chewing.

"Oh c'mon, don't tell me you don't like hamburgers!"

"Just spit it out Cas." Sam said, chuckling at the conflicted look on the angel's face. Cas complied, promptly spitting the bite he'd taken back out and said, "I like the hamburger itself but there's something on it that I don't."

"What?"

"I don't know Dean." Dean sighed, set his own burger down, reached over to pull the top bun off Cas' hamburger, and said, "Well, figure it out."

Which was how Cas ended up picking up each topping and sniffing it, earning a weird look from their waitress when she came by to fill up their drinks. Dean simply smiled at her and offered no explanation, he simply had none, and went back to watched as Cas picked off onions, most of the lettuce and a tomato before making a 'a-ha!' sound and holding up a pickle.

"I dislike this."

"A pickle?"

"Yes." Cas went about picking off all the pickles, rearranged his burger and took another bite, smiling and nodding his head in approval before continuing.

"Alrighty then." A couple minutes passed by in peace before they were interrupted once again by Cas as he tasted his milkshake for the first time, a pleased moan escaping before he went to town.

"You're going to get a brain freeze Cas." Dean's own brain hurt just watching Cas suck down his milkshake without taking a break or even breathing as far as Dean could tell. Cas simply slid his eyes over to Dean and quirked an eyebrow at him, silently asking what a brain freeze was.

"It's…never mind, you don't seem to be getting one anyway. Lucky bastard." Cas simply hummed around his straw, finished his milkshake and went back to his fries while he waited for Sam and Dean to finish their own lunches.

As they paid Dean said, "We're getting you a root beer float next time. I think you'll enjoy that even more."

"I think he'll demolish it in three seconds flat." Sam muttered, smiling at the blank look Cas shot the two of them before climbing into his spot in the backseat.

They were a couple hours from Bobby's when Cas suddenly spoke up from the backseat, "I must go, I'll meet you at Bobby's." Before either of them could comment, Cas was gone in a flutter of wings.

"What the hell?" Sam shrugged and carried on with reading his book and Dean turned the volume up on the radio, he'd just been gearing up to teach the angel the joys of twenty questions too.

True to word Cas reappeared as soon as Sam and Dean were climbing out of the Impala at Bobby's house, "What the hell was that about Cas?" Dean asked, closing the door behind him, eying the angel.

"You okay Cas?" Sam, being the ever-emotional one of the two seemed to have noticed the dejected look Cas was sporting.

"One of my brothers was close; I didn't want to endanger you." Cas sighed, looked up at the sky and shoved his hands into his pockets. He'd stayed in the jeans he'd taken from Dean but had put on the white button down of Jimmy's that morning instead of the hoodie or t-shirt. It was a _really_ good look for Cas, not that Dean would ever admit it out loud to anyone.

"You don't have to leave Cas; we can always help you out." Dean didn't add on the fact that if Cas was killed while he was away from him or Sam neither of them would know and that thought didn't sit well with Dean. The image of Cas' broken body laid out somewhere uninhabited, wings burned into the ground below him; never to be found-Sam nudging his shoulder interrupted his depressing thought process.

"What?" Sam gestured toward Cas, giving Dean a _significant look_. Dean continued to watch Sam as he jerked his chin towards the angel, gesturing alone with his eyebrows, Cas was right, Sam did have a large and expressive forehead.

"_What_ Sam?" Sam sighed, giving Dean a look that said he was so disappointed in Dean and mumbled, "I can't _believe_ how emotionally stunted you are!" And headed for Cas who was still standing there with a kicked puppy look on his face. Cas looked back down to Earth when Sam stepped in front of him and then let out a surprised '_oof_' as Sam picked him up in a bear hug, Cas' feet dangling a few inches from the ground, his face smushed into Sam's shoulder.

"Christ, I've got a twelve-year-old girl for a brother." Dean muttered, watching as Cas tentatively returned the hug as well as he could with his arms trapped against his sides.

Dean didn't miss the quiet, "Thank you, Sam." When Sam finally released Cas, Sam nodded, smiled and turned to Dean and said, "Let me have the keys."

"Why?"

"Going to make a run to the store for some things." Dean eyed his brother, took in the pleading look in his eyes, sighed and handed over the keys to the Impala and threatened death should any harm come to her.

"I know Dean, just go in and talk to Bobby about whatever it was he called us here for, I'll be back soon." With that, Sam left and both Cas and Dean headed into the house.

Bobby had come across some ancient prophecy that he immediately handed over to Cas to read and decipher while he and Dean cracked open a few beers to relax with.

"How long you boys planning on being around?"

"Depends."

"This prophecy is false." Cas said from his spot on the couch, rolling the scroll up and placing it back on the desk. Bobby sighed, muttered something under his breath and disappeared into the kitchen to get going on dinner.

"Not even one little thing worth using?"

"No." And that was that.

Sam returned an hour later loaded down with bags from the local grocery store, Dean raised an eyebrow at him and Sam simply shrugged, dumped the bags down in the kitchen and accepted the bowl of chili Bobby thrust at him. They filled him in on the great big steaming pile of nothing that they had come here for and agreed to rest for a few days before continuing on their way.

"What's in the bags dude?"

"We're going to teach Cas how to make s'mores." Dean could totally get down with that plan, he nodded his agreement and they ignored the grumbling from Bobby about setting fire to his salvage yard. The four headed outside, Sam heading off to find sticks appropriate for marshmallow mounting and Dean gathered up supplies to set up a fire pit in the middle of Bobby's yard. Cas and Bobby stood by the house, watching everything, Bobby was talking to Cas but Dean was too far way to be able to make it out. He just hoped it wasn't some sort of embarrassing story from Dean's childhood, not that Cas didn't know them all already.

Thirty minutes later they were all settled around a decent sized fire and Dean was saying, "And you just shove it all together and enjoy, don't press too hard though or you'll break the cracker and just end up with a mess." Cas watched with his usual intense curiosity as Dean put together the angel's first s'more and didn't interrupt Dean.

"There you go, enjoy." Dean handed over the concoction and the three hunters watched as Cas took his first bite, ignoring the part where Dean had told him to shove the entire thing into his mouth. Cas moaned around his mouthful and _then_ shoved the whole thing into his mouth.

"What'd I tell you?" Sam snorted from across the fire, Bobby rolled his eyes and Cas licked his fingers clean while saying, "I particularly enjoy chocolate."

"You proved that by demolishing two boxes of Cocoa Pebbles on your own." Dean said with a smile, shoving a stick into Cas' hand and picking up his own to make a s'more for himself.

Cas proved to not be an expert marshmallow roaster when he ended up watching the fire more than his marshmallow, not paying attention to how it was slowly browning, and then quickly blackening until it caught on fire.

"Cas! Your marshmallow is on fire!" Cas' eyes widened and he jerked the stick out of the flames, unfortunately, he jerked too hard, and the flaming marshmallow went sailing back over their heads, and landed with a _splat_ on the hood of one of the cars in the junkyard, still flaming.

"You idjit, if you set fire to my house I _will_ kill you!" Sam and Dean were too busy laughing to acknowledge the wide eyed look Cas pinned on Bobby before he said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"He's kidding Cas. He wouldn't kill you; he loves you as much as he loves us." Dean managed to get out between laughs before he broke out again, the image of a flaming marshmallow flying through the air stuck in his mind.

"Which is to say not at all," Bobby grumbled, "You boys are pains in my ass is what you are." Catching the confused look on Cas' face Sam said, "He's kidding dude. Bobby's way of showing his affections is by being a grumpy old man."

Bobby responded by shoving his now completed s'more into his mouth, mumbling something more about idjits and angels and murder. Dean chuckled and shook his head, watching as Cas took another marshmallow and dutifully paid more attention to it this time. Sam and Bobby fell into a quiet conversation about some old text or spell or whatever, Cas pieced together his own s'more and Dean simply watched his own marshmallow in the fire before he bumped his shoulder against Cas' and asked, "You okay Cas?" Cas shot him a confused look and Dean clarified, "From earlier today I mean."

Cas' eyes shifted down and away from Dean's, nimble fingers plucking graham cracker crumbs from his jean clad knee and said, "I had to kill him."

Angels were dicks, but they were still Cas' family, they were still his brothers, meaning Cas was doing something not even Dean could do. Cas was doing it for him, and Sam. Killing his own family so Dean could keep what was left of his, he placed his hand over Cas' fidgeting one and whispered, "I'm sorry Cas."

Cas stared at their hands before twisting his around, their fingers sliding together and entwining like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"I don't regret anything Dean."

"I'm still sorry. They're all dicks to me, but they're still your family." Cas simply nodded, his thumb absently moving over Dean's hand before he looked up at Dean, fire reflected in his dark eyes. Cas leaned forward a little and Dean's breath caught in his chest, found himself leaning forward a little too, eyes flicking down to Cas' mouth when the angel licked his lips. The corner of Cas' mouth twitched before he whispered, "Your marshmallow is on fire Dean."

Dean jerked away, pulling his flaming marshmallow from the flames, "_Damnit_!"


	4. Chapter 4

Alright, you guys asked for Gabriel, so you get some Gabriel. Kinda...turned out different than I thought it would. Sorry if Gabe here gets a little...not himself near the end, he's such a pain in my ass to write.  
Any other suggestions you guys have for this are gladly welcomed! Let me hear it! Ideas, gimmie! *grabby hands*  
Anyway, hope you guys enjoy it!

* * *

They had been at Bobby's for two days, Sam had been keeping an eye out for a new hunt but nothing was really coming their way. Dean spent his time working on some of the cars in the yard to keep busy, Bobby continued with his research and Cas had disappeared the day before claiming he needed to get back to his search.

Dean was tempted to text the angel and ask where he was. Last time had done that Cas had been somewhere in Iraq or Iran or something and he'd come back with some delicious dessert food some old woman had given him. Another time he'd come back from Japan with some cool little gadgets they couldn't get in the States.

"Here," Dean turned and took the offered bottle of beer Sam handed to him and leaned back against the hood of the Impala.

"What's up?"

"Just taking a break from the books." Sam positioned himself next to Dean, took a sip from his bottle and asked, "Heard anything from Cas?"

"No, I'm sure he's fine though. He's a big boy. Angel. Whatever." Sam opened his mouth, probably to give some snappy comeback but was interrupted by the ground bucking up underneath their feet. They jolted away from the car, exchanged confused looks and Dean muttered, "What the hell?"

"Earthquake?"

"In South Dakota?" Sam shrugged and they both headed into the house, Sam calling out to Bobby, asking if he'd felt it too.

"Didn't feel like much of an earthquake, more like a jolt, like something landed."

"Landed?"

"Space junk? Meteor? Who knows." Sam frowned at Bobby then immediately sat down at his laptop, pulling it towards himself and tapping away. Dean sighed and sat down on the couch, watching the two get into research mode, not like there'd be much on the internet or in a book about something that had just happened.

"_Move_!" The command came out of nowhere, full of authority that Dean didn't even think on who or what, simply shot off the couch without a thought. It wasn't until he caught a familiar flash of tan and another of slicked back hair that he thought to ask again, "What the hell?"

"Gabriel?" Sam was up on his feet, grabbing for a knife, gun, something. Gabriel ignored them, setting an unconscious, bruised and bloody Castiel down on the couch where Dean had just been.

"What the fuck did you do to him this time?" Dean snapped, shouldering past the archangel and kneeling by Cas' head, the angel looked like he'd been in a fight with a tank.

"Ease up there bucko. I didn't do anything to him."

"Then what the hell happened?" Sam, ever the voice of reason, asked.

"Zachariah and some of his cronies managed to ambush him."

"And you didn't think to help him out a little?" Dean glared up from his spot on the floor, he was sick of Gabriel's shit, his meddling and trying to steer them into doing shit they didn't want or need to do.

"I wasn't there for it Dean," Gabriel snapped, he didn't look like the Trickster at the moment, there was nothing joking about his expression. Right now he looked like a pissed off, protective older brother. Dean had a moment to think Gabriel cared more about his little brother than he let on before he continued, "I was in the area, felt his little crash landing and went to check it out, this is how I found him."

"Wait, that was _Cas_ that felt like a bomb going off?" Sam sounded shocked, looking back and forth from Gabriel to Castiel.

"From what I can tell our little angel here put up a hell of a fight, but he's pretty hurt." Dean frowned up at Gabriel then turned to look at Cas. There were bruises on his face, a cut on his temple and his arm looked broken, "I've seen Cas get up from worse."

"Oh, kiddo, you're only seeing the damage to his vessel. You can't see _him_. They pretty much shredded his wings, hence the crash landing. Amazed he got this far in his condition."

"Well he's a tough, sneaky little bastard, how do we help him?"

"You don't."

"There has to be something we can do to help." Sam was hovering behind Gabriel like some giant worried mother bear, glancing between Cas and Dean.

"I'll help as much as I can but he just needs some quiet and rest, not much else we can do since he can't go up to Heaven." All three of them turned to look at the archangel, Bobby broke the silence by asking, "And why are you helping? Last I heard you weren't so much for the assistance."

Gabriel sighed and looked down at Cas, then he shrugged and said, "He's my brother." Dean snorted and Sam just went about staring a hole into the back of the archangel's head.

"Plus, when he comes to he's going to be in a hell of a lot of pain, so unless you want him blowing out the windows and knocking your head off your shoulders, you need me here." Bobby grunted, Dean frowned and Sam's forehead creased with worry.

"We should make him comfortable at least." Sam finally said. Gabriel nodded, snapped his fingers and Cas was cleaned up and placed into familiar pajama bottoms and hoodie.

"Or we could do it the easy way." Dean sighed and sat down on the floor by Cas' head, hesitantly reaching up and running his fingers through the dark, silky hair. Gabriel watched him for a moment before popping a piece of chocolate into his mouth and saying, "I still don't get what he sees in you chuckleheads."

Dean chose to ignore him and asked, "Do you know when he's going to wake up?"

"About ten seconds, scoot over." Dean moved and Gabriel took his place, clamping a hand over Castiel's mouth and hauling him into a sitting position. Seconds later Cas' eyes flew open, the blue shot through with silver light, "You stay in there Castiel! You hear me? You're not allowed to fly off out of your vessel!"

Gabriel shoved his hand harder against Cas' mouth, pushing him into the back of the couch. Cas' back arched off the couch and the familiar high-pitched whine started up as the light in Cas' eyes flared. Dean clamped his hands over his ears; saw Bobby and Sam copying his movements, saw Gabriel's mouth moving, shouting at Cas over the noise.

Finally, the light bled out of Cas' eyes, returning them to their usual shade of blue, his true voice cut off and Gabriel removed his hand. Dean lowered his own hands and heard, "Gabriel? What?"

"Yeah, I know. Shocked to see me here huh?" Cas simply blinked at Gabriel, turned his attention to Dean, then to Bobby and then Sam and asked, "What happened?"

"You don't remember?" Sam asked, moving to stand behind Dean who was kneeling at Gabriel's other side now.

"I remember I wasn't _here_. How did I get here?" Cas' attention turned to Gabriel who said, "I found you in your self-made crater a few miles away. Brought you here so you can heal up." Cas nodded and started to lean back, stopped when Gabriel grabbed his shirt and pulled him back upright, "You might want to avoid that."

Cas nodded, rested his hand on Gabriel's hand, which was still twisted up in the sweatshirt, "Who did this to you Cas? Was it Zachariah? I'll rip the pompous dick a new hole if it was." Cas shook his head, leaned forward until his forehead was resting against Gabriel's shoulder and muttered, "It was Haniel, Jophiel and Mihr. Jophiel is the only one that got away from me."

"I'll kill the little asshole, angel of enlightenment my ass. I'll enlighten something -"

"Gabriel."

"I will."

"No, brother, he didn't want to fight me. Leave him be."

"The other two?"

"I took care of them." Gabriel sighed, rested his head against Cas' for a moment before pulling away and said, "Let's get you fixed up bro."

The two angels spent the next few hours down in the panic room; Dean sat on the hard wooden stairs, listening to Cas' whimpers and Gabriel soothing him in a language that sounded ancient and musical. When they finally emerged Cas was pale and shaky, Gabriel's arm around his waist the only thing holding him up.

"You okay Cas?" Dean hopped up, instantly moving to Cas' other side, helping him up the stairs even though Gabriel could manage it on his own just fine.

"I'll be fine in a few days. I just need rest."

"Better be glad I'm as awesome as I am or little brother here probably would never be able to fly again otherwise."

"Shit, you were that bad Cas?"

"I would have been fine." Cas shot Gabriel a glare as he settled himself into the couch, pulling his legs up and covering himself with the blanket Sam had left there for him. Gabriel snorted, gave Cas a look and said, "Please bro, your wings were _shredded_. No way in hell you would have been able to heal all of it by yourself with the state your grace is in."

"Don't you have some trick to go and play Gabriel?" Cas snapped, glaring over the edge of the blanket that he'd pulled up to his nose. Dean chuckled at the image, and sat down next to Cas on the couch, pulling over another blanket and several pillows, settling the angel in a little nest.

"You wound me Cas, I'll ignore it due to the fact you're in pain, but I won't ignore it next time." Cas, in a very human gesture, rolled his eyes and settled into his nest of bed linens, careful to keep his back from resting against the couch. Gabriel sighed and before he fucked off to wherever he went he said, "I'll be back later to check in on you Cas."

"I don't trust him." Dean muttered as soon as the archangel disappeared.

"I know."

"Why is he suddenly giving a damn about you anyway?" Cas sighed, shifted in his spot a little and said, "Gabriel has been alone for a very long time. Being able to connect with another angel after not being able to…" Cas trailed off and shook his head. Dean stared over at Cas for a moment, knowing Cas had to be feeling the same things, Cas was also cut off from Heaven; probably saw himself as alone as well even though he had Dean and Sam around.

"Hey, we didn't return any of the zombie movies we rented, figured you'd like having them around to watch whenever you wanted. Want me to get one for you?" A slight smile curved Cas' lips and he nodded, "_Night of the Living Dead_ please."

"Sure thing Cas." Dean hopped up off the couch and headed for his bag where the movies were stored, "Sam! Quit your research and come watch a zombie movie like a real boy!" There was a moment of silence, a sigh and then the sound of Sam heading to the couch and sitting next to Cas, quietly asking him how he was doing.

Dean returned with the movie, popped it into the DVD player he and Sam had bought after fixing up Bobby's busted out TV last time they'd been here.

"Should have told you to bring some popcorn." Dean said to Sam, settling down on the couch next to Cas again, Sam was on the other side of the angel, pointedly ignoring Dean.

An hour into the movie Cas' weight settled against Dean's side and a soft snore came from the angel. Both Sam and Dean turned their attention to Cas, who had his head resting on Dean's shoulder and presently was conked out.

"Thought angels didn't sleep." Bobby muttered from where he'd been pretending _not_ to watch the movie.

"Maybe it's his 'restful meditation'." Sam snickered, returning his attention to the movie.

"Whatever, if he drools on my shirt though I'm kicking his ass." But Dean couldn't help but shift a little so Cas wasn't at such an awkward angle and couldn't help but lean his cheek against the top of Cas' head.

* * *

Dean finally managed to drag himself out of bed the next day around noon, he'd settled Cas into the couch around three in the morning, everyone else having already gone to bed. Dean headed downstairs and heard, "Here try this one bro."

Great, Gabriel was here.

There was silence, then a spitting sound and Gabriel saying, "Aw c'mon, you don't like that one either?"

"I find the taste and texture of the coconut displeasing."

"You're no brother of mine. Try this one then." Dean entered the room to see Cas and Gabriel sitting on the floor, facing one another and sitting cross-legged. Cas was leaning forward a little, an uncomfortable look on his face and Gabriel was surrounded by mounds of various types of candy. Sam was tucked behind Bobby's desk surrounded by his laptop and piles of books and Bobby was nowhere to be seen.

"What's going on down here?" Sam looked up from the book he was reading and said, "Gabriel is trying to find candy that Cas likes."

"Um…why?"

"Well, he's my little brother, therefore he must have a sweet tooth in there somewhere, I'm just trying to get it out of hiding." Dean seated himself on the couch, snagged a _Pay Day_ from Gabriel's collection and watched as Cas chewed on the chocolate bar that Gabriel had shoved into his mouth.

"I like this one. Hello, Dean."

"Morning Cas." Dean looked at the wrapper in Cas' hand and shook his head, _Mars Dark_. Gabriel looked at it too and rolled his eyes, "Dark chocolate, of course." Cas hummed, took another from the pile in front of him and popped it into his mouth.

"If all else fails Gabriel, feed him Cocoa Pebbles."

"Can't argue Cocoa Pebbles, especially the chocolate milk left behind." Dean opened his mouth to respond that the chocolate milk left behind after Cocoa Pebbles was indeed awesome but stopped himself. He was _not_ going to fucking _bond_ with Gabriel. So instead he turned his attention to Cas and asked, "How are you doing today Cas?"

"Better. I will need a few more days."

"Take your time; we could all use a little break. Sam hasn't found us a hunt yet anyway and there's no new news on Lucifer." Sam made a sound of agreement from behind his laptop and Gabriel simply popped a _Starburst_ into his mouth and studied Cas before asking, "How's the pain?"

"Manageable." Gabriel reached forward and Cas slapped his hand away, snapping, "I said it was manageable." Gabriel rolled his eyes, tossed another chocolate bar at Cas and muttered, "Well you certainly have changed in that way."

Sam's head popped up over the top of his laptop like a little jack-in-the-box and asked, "You knew Cas?"

"Of course I knew Cas; I know all of my brothers. I liked Cas best though." Gabriel winked at Cas who sighed and muttered, "He enjoyed trying to talk me out of my duties."

"Stubborn little Castiel, only one who gave me a challenge." Dean snorted, was true enough, Cas' stubbornness was enough set him up as an honorary Winchester.

"So, what do we have planned for the day?" Sam looked over at Dean, shrugged and returned to his laptop.

"Daytime television." Gabriel said, his candy pile disappearing as he stood and hauled Cas up off the floor with him, the two plopping down onto the couch, Dean having been shoved off to the side. The TV popped on and an episode of _Dr. Sexy_ popped on, "Look Dean! Your favorite show!"

"That's not funny. You ruined this show for me." Gabriel chuckled and the channel changed, landing on an old episode of _Scrubs_.

"Seriously?" Gabriel shrugged, Cas' head tilted, brow furrowed and said, "I don't understand."

"It's a show Cas, just enjoy it." Gabriel patted Cas on the shoulder and they both turned their attention to the show, Cas still with his head tilted in confusion at what was being said between the actors. Dean hopped off the couch and headed into the kitchen with the intention of making Cas a root beer float like he had planned a few days ago.

Fifteen minutes later, he had three root beer floats sitting proudly on the kitchen counter, and they were damn good looking too. Dean somehow managed to get all three into where everyone else was without spilling anything, he handed one over to Sam who grinned at him in thanks. Dean sat next to Cas, handed over the glass and said, "Here you go Cas, you're really going to enjoy this." Cas frowned down at the contents of the glass, picked at the spoon stuck into the ice cream and twirled the straw around.

"Where's mine?" Gabriel asked, looking around Cas to pout at Dean.

"Can make your own asshat." Gabriel sighed and with a snap of his fingers had his own in his hand, naturally it looked fifty times better than the ones Dean had made but he didn't care, homemade root beer floats made with love and care trumped whatever Gabriel made.

Cas took a tentative sip and the look that crossed over his face was one that Dean was never ever going to forget.

"Good right?"

Cas moaned in answer and went about attacking his root beer float. Both Dean and Gabriel chuckled and shared a look before Dean remembered he was _not bonding_ with Gabriel and snapped his attention to the TV where _Finding Nemo_ popped on.

"Oh, come on, can at least put something good on." From the corner of his eye, he noticed Cas straighten up a little and his eyes brightened like they did when a zombie movie was in progress.

"Cas wanted to watch it." Gabriel grumbled, slouching down on the couch, looking how Dean felt about it.

"It's a good movie!" Sam objected from his place behind the desk, Cas nodded his agreement and said around a mouthful of ice cream, "It's very touching."

"Girls, I'm surrounded by girls." Dean muttered, standing up to put his glass away in the kitchen and head out into the yard to work on some cars, something that would help him _not_ grow a vagina.

A couple hours later Dean was back in the kitchen to grab a beer when he spotted Cas sprawled out on the floor, arms tucked up underneath his body, one leg straight while the other was hitched up to where Cas' knee was nearly pressed into his chest. He was snoring softly into the floor and Gabriel was sitting by his head running his fingers through the dark hair, looking down at his brother with a look that Dean couldn't really decipher.

Dean leaned against the doorframe, cracked open his beer and asked, "So, why are you here? And don't give me 'he's my brother' crap, you didn't seem to give two shits about him when you sent him to wherever it was you sent him in TV Land."

Gabriel sighed, twirled a longer strand of hair around his finger and said, "Everyone needs someone Dean."

Dean watched for a moment then asked, "You weren't 'just in the area' were you?" Gabriel's shoulders slouched a little, his head shook and muttered, "He called for me, begged me to help him."

"And you didn't." Gabriel turned and glared at Dean, his eyes flashing gold in the dimming light, "I've helped him as much as I can. I fixed his vessel; I fixed his wings as much as I could. I _want_ to help him but there's only so much I can do."

"You can stay and help us." Sam appeared on the stairs and sat down on them, peering down on the scene through the railing. Gabriel sighed, buried his fingers in Cas' hair whose snoring cut off, and turned into a sound that resembled purring. Dean snorted and couldn't help the smile that tugged on his lips while Gabriel continued what he was doing.

Finally, the archangel said, "Being with one of my brothers again after so long, it's overwhelming."

"You don't have to be alone Gabriel. You can help us, can help _Cas_." Sam said, looking so damn _earnest_ that Dean would have agreed to damn near anything if that look had been directed at him. They all fell silent after that, the only sound being Cas and his near purring as Gabriel continued with his petting. Sam finally stood and headed down the stairs, "Just think about it." He disappeared outside, giving Dean a look before he did. Dean simply shrugged and went back to enjoying his beer.

Gabriel finally sighed, stopped his petting and stood saying, "I'll be back later, keep an eye on him." Before Dean could respond, the archangel had disappeared, leaving a _Mars_ bar by Cas' head. Cas made an unhappy sound in his sleep and Dean settled down on the floor where Gabriel had been, slipping his fingers through the soft strands of hair.

"You'll always have me and Sam, Cas. I promise."

Cas purred in response.


	5. Chapter 5

So, this was hard to write for some reason, I really don't know why. But thank you to **elemenoze**, my good buddy over on LJ, for giving me some cannon fodder for this...

I think it's because I'm running out of ideas. If you guys want me to keep going give me something to work on! I'm running out here, it's that or I'm just in a non-fluffy writing place right now for some reason, I've been working on that story I started ages ago that's kinda…dark, and another part in my 'verse which also isn't to fluffy at the moment, although it will head there again soon.

Anyway!

Tomorrow night. I'm freakin' vibrating out of my seat for 6.15 guys. Like whoa. I'm either going to die of laughter or secondhand embarrassment, either way it's going to be an epic episode I think.

So, anyway, I hope you enjoy this.

* * *

The next day found the three of them walking towards the local grocery store, Dean arguing with Sam about what kind of pie they should get for dessert that night; Cas was simply walking between the two of them, a bemused expression on his face.

They fell into single file to get in through the door, Sam taking the lead while Cas remained in the middle, Dean wasn't paying much attention when he walked in through the door, so he smacked right into Cas' back. The angel had frozen in place and was staring wide-eyed at the aisles of food.

"Jeez Cas, warn a guy." Dean muttered, rubbing his chest, it had felt like he'd walked into a brick wall instead of a person. Cas didn't bother responding, he was too busy staring.

"Cas?" Sam had come back from getting a cart and was staring at the angel with a mixed look of worry and amusement.

"There's _so much_." Cas finally said, blinking and looking over his shoulder to Dean and then to Sam. Dean slung his arm around Cas' shoulders and pulled him along into the produce section so Sam could get his daily dose of vegetables and said, "Yeah, well. Welcome to America buddy."

Dean realized halfway through picking out different kinds of apples that it had been a bad idea to bring Cas with them. Cas was circling the stand where all the apples were, picking one up every now and then to either sniff it or examine it with the kind of intensity Cas saved for his staring contests with Dean. He also realized Cas had somehow gotten him to _pick out apples_, healthy food, food that Dean never ate. Dean sighed, picked one last apple at random and shoved it into the bag with six other random apples, since Cas wanted to try apples but he didn't know what he liked so he was going to sample most of them.

"We're going to max out one of the cards here." Dean said to Sam when he approached the cart with the apples. Sam simply smiled a little and they both turned their attention to Cas who had moved from sniffing apples to petting a peach.

"It's pretty worth it though Dean. Cas deserves to know what it is he's fighting for." Dean huffed, crossed his arms and shouted, "Cas! It's a fruit, not a pet!" Cas turned and blinked at him, his blue eyes filled with such innocence and curiosity that Dean forgot for a moment that Cas was a warrior, not a five year old sampling everything for the first time.

Cas approached the brothers, the peach still cupped in his hands, "It's very soft." Dean rolled his eyes and Sam smiled, pulled a plastic bag from one of the dispensers and held it open for Cas to put the peach in, "They're pretty good to eat too."

They left the produce section with a cart filled with apples, bananas, nectarines, peaches, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, grapes, tomatoes, celery and carrots. Cas wanted to get one of everything but both Sam and Dean had talked him into taking it slowly, they'd come back another time to get other things. The three of them wandered up and down the aisles for another hour, Cas randomly picked things off the shelves, placed them in the cart and would wander off to examine other items before they would leave the aisle and move on to another one.

They entered the cereal aisle and Dean turned to Cas to ask if he wanted some Cocoa Pebbles or to maybe try something new when he realized the angel wasn't there.

"Code red, missing angel." Dean muttered to Sam. Sam looked up from his contemplation of Honey Bunches of Oats and asked, "Where'd he go?"

"I don't know, I thought he was behind me." They both turned and headed for the previous aisle, it was filled with coffee and tea and Cas was standing in the middle of it all, gaping at the coffee selection.

"Cas?" Cas blinked over at Dean and Sam and returned to his gaping.

"You okay?"

"There are so many _choices_. How do you choose?" Sam and Dean exchanged smirks and Sam said, "You just get what you like really."

"But what if you don't know what you like? Or you could like one thing and there could be another thing you like but you would never know because you never try it because there are just too many-"

"Whoa! Cas! Chill out. You're gonna make your head hurt." Cas blinked at Dean, stared at the selection of coffee again, sighed and turned away from it muttering, "I just don't understand." Dean patted the angel's shoulder and said, "Don't worry Cas, it's something you get used to. Now, more Cocoa Pebbles or are you wanting to try something else?"

Another hour passed and they finally found themselves standing in line to check out, Cas was staring at the gossip magazines with a frown on his face and Sam was unloading the cart while Dean stood by and observed. They'd ended up with a variety of fruit, three boxes of Cocoa Pebbles, various types of chips, a multitude of yogurt and weirdest choice of all was the different types of toothpaste. The brothers had tried explaining that you don't eat toothpaste and Cas had simply looked at them like they were idiots and said, "I know the purpose of toothpaste. I just wish to discover which kind I like best."

Dean didn't know if he should worry about Cas worrying about his dental hygiene but he didn't bother asking.

"Do people not realize there are bigger issues to read about?" Cas asked suddenly, he was still frowning at the gossip magazines, alerting everyone to someone else's affair and who had the best and worst beach bodies.

"Probably, some people just want to forget for a while though." Cas turned his frown on Dean who shrugged at him and pulled out the credit card to give to Sam so he could pay.

Dean was right, they maxed out the card, but it was worth it when later, Cas was sitting on the floor in front of the couch with twenty different types of yogurt spread out around him. Cas had painstakingly peeled off all the tops and was using one spoon to dip into the cups to sample; he either hummed approval or made a face and passed the cup up to Sam who was sitting behind the angel on the couch with a book and his own spoon, waiting for the rejects.

So far, Cas had appreciated the basics of vanilla, lemon, blueberry and strawberry. Pineapple was out along with cherry, mixed berry, coffee and pear.

There was a flutter of wings and, "Yogurt, Cas? Really? I introduced you to candy for a reason bro." Cas turned and looked at Gabriel with his spoon stuck in his mouth and blue eyes wide with the new discovery of strawberry banana.

"Not everything is about candy Gabriel." Sam muttered, finishing off the pear flavored yogurt and tossing the empty cup at Dean's head who caught it and tossed it in the trashcan with the others.

"You're full of lies." Gabriel threw himself down on the couch, watched Cas for a moment and nudged him with a foot; Cas ignored him and moved on to another flavor. Gabriel continued nudging with a smile on his face until Cas turned and glared and snapped, "Gabriel if you keep doing that I'm going to karate chop you in the throat!" The three stared at him before Sam burst into hysterical laughter, Gabriel stared in stunned silence and Dean asked, "Where the hell did you learn the phrase 'karate chop'?"

Cas ignored them all and went back to sampling his yogurt flavors.

* * *

Later that night after dinner of chili and cornbread, which Cas had delighted in. Sam had kept Cas from eating all the fruit in one go, saying he should pace himself so as not to get overwhelmed. Cas had given Sam a look that said _I'm an angel of the Lord, I don't get 'overwhelmed'_. But he had agreed while Gabriel had rolled his eyes and the two angels had seated themselves around the table in the kitchen while Gabriel introduced Cas to ice cream.

Dean was sitting on the counter in the kitchen watching the process while Sam was sitting off in the library again researching with Bobby. Cas had accepted all the regular flavors of ice cream, particularly enjoying strawberry the best out of the chocolate and vanilla.

Gabriel had since then moved on to the more involved flavors, Dean noticed most of the cartons sitting around were from Ben & Jerry's, Cas was enjoying all of them so far but Gabriel was only allowing two spoonful's from the cartons before taking them away and putting a new flavor in front of Cas.

"So Gabriel, are you gonna hang around and help us out?" Dean finally asked as Cas sampled chocolate chip cookie dough and gave it the angel seal of approval before being introduced to chunky monkey. Gabriel hesitated then nodded, "Yeah, I'll help when I can. I don't promise to be at your beck and call like little bro here, but if shit gets heavy I'll help out."

Cas pulled the spoon from his mouth and whispered, "Thank you Gabriel."

"Yeah, well…don't thank me yet." Gabriel grumbled, shifting uncomfortably in his seat before setting yet another carton of ice cream in front of Cas.

Cas eyed Gabriel for a moment, looking like he had something to say before he sighed and dug into the new flavor. Cas' eyes fluttered closed and a sound that should have been _illegal_ in all fifty states escaped from deep in his throat, the room suddenly felt a bit warmer and Dean cleared his throat while Gabriel grinned and said, "Looks like we have a definite winner there." He reached forward to take the carton but Cas' eyes widened and he snatched it back and disappeared into the living room with a flutter of wings.

"What flavor was that?" Dean asked, raising an eyebrow at the archangel. Gabriel grinned and said, "Mud pie. I knew he would have a thing for chocolate."

"That's like, chocolate in chocolate in chocolate."

"Exactly."

"We're dangerously close to bonding aren't we?" Gabriel nodded, jerked a thumb over his shoulder and said, "I'm gonna…go. I'll be back later with some entertainment." Then he too was gone with a flutter of wings, Dean sighed, hopped down from the counter and took the abandoned carton of chunky monkey from the table, found a spoon and headed for the couch where Cas was happily eating his ice cream and watching _Zombieland_ again.

"So, Cas…"

"Yes, Dean?" Dean shrugged, scooped a large amount of ice cream out of the carton and shoved it into his mouth, "So, exciting day of learning likes and dislikes huh?" was what Dean had to say when he finally thought of something.

"It was enlightening yes."

"That's uh…that's good." Cas nodded, eying Dean worriedly before turning his attention back to his ice cream and movie.

Everyone headed off to bed shortly after, Sam gave Cas a quick lesson on how to work the laptop so he could watch movies online to keep himself entertained while everyone else was sleeping. Gabriel appeared just as Dean was heading up the stairs and said, "Don't worry bro, I brought some entertainment for us."

"He doesn't like hookers and strippers Gabe." Dean said, pausing on the stairs, because, sadly it was true. All he could think about was Cas' freaked out expression when he'd been in the brothel, and Dean felt something a little possessive flare up inside of him at the thought of Cas being with someone else, especially if Dean wasn't there. He didn't want anything to happen to the angel after all.

"Don't worry Dean, it's just video games, figured Cas can learn the joys of nerds everywhere." Dean rolled his eyes and disappeared into the room he shared with Sam.

No one slept that night, thanks to the sounds of explosions, gun fire and the two angels shouting at each other when the other did something displeasing in the game. It was worth it though to hear Cas actually _cackling _at Gabriel in the morning when he managed to blow Gabriel up in the game.

* * *

The grocery store thing was brought on by a scene in a movie I watched recently _Moscow on the Hudson_, interesting movie, it was also inspired by me asking my group of friends "if you took someone from a third world country and dropped them into America, where would you take them?" grocery store was one of the answers I got.

Also. A friend of mine said "If I hear one more person say 'what you thought' I'm going to karate chop them in the throat." She's a very nonviolent person so it kind of came out of the blue and made us cackle like lunatics and lack the ability to breathe. So I just kind of imagined it something Cas would say out of the blue, so…there's the story behind this part. Hope you liked!


	6. Chapter 6

So..you guys are _awesome_. All your ideas gave me so much to work with. I love you all!

So, I took a lot of liberties with this chapter. I mostly used Google and only read up on a few pages, so if I get anything wrong I apologize. Just...pretend I'm right for the sake of the story.

That's pretty much all I've got to say, so I hope you guys enjoy and once again, ya'll are _AWESOME!_

_

* * *

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Both Dean and Sam stumbled into their hotel room; all Dean wanted was a warm shower and a juicy burger. They had been running all over town trying to figure out their latest case, after countless interviews Sam figured it to be some kind of cursed object that the museum in town had added to its Egyptian exhibit.

Dean stopped short though when he spotted Cas sitting at the small table in the room, back ramrod straight, eyes wide and hands resting on top of his thighs.

"What's wrong?"

"Now what makes you think something's wrong?" Dean jumped as Gabriel's voice came from behind him. Sam sighed, closed the door, and said, "Maybe from the way Cas looks like someone just told him Santa doesn't exist."

Gabriel rolled his eyes when Cas said in a very strained voice, "That's because he doesn't exist. Well, he did at one point but not by that name, he was a very nice-"

"Castiel! They don't care!" Gabriel got out amidst all the verbal diarrhea his brother was spouting. Cas clamped his mouth shut, took a deep breath and fixed his wide-eyed stare on Dean.

"Seriously? What happened?" Dean finally moved into the room and started digging through his duffel for a change of clothes. Gabriel let out a chuckle, plopped himself into the chair across from Cas and said, "Oh, nothing."

"Why don't we believe you?" Sam muttered, pulling his laptop out of his bag.

"Gabriel and I spent the day at Hersey Park, we tried many different kinds of chocolate, then when we left Gabriel and I sat on the beach at-"

"What Castiel is trying to explain is that we spent the day sampling many different kinds of candy, I was curious to know what he enjoyed." Gabriel was grinning at Cas; Dean stared at Cas for a moment, frowned and asked, "Cas are you…are you _vibrating_?" Sam huffed out a startled laugh while Gabriel's grin grew, "Seems little bro has a limit to how much sugar he can handle."

"So this is a sugar rush?" Gabriel nodded and Dean rested a hand on Cas' shoulder. Sure enough, the angel was full out vibrating, like one of those cheap massage chairs that only had a vibration setting.

"Dude, you're supposed to be bouncing off the walls or some shit, not sitting quietly and vibrating yourself to death." Cas simply blinked up at Dean while Gabriel snorted and said, "If Cas 'bounces off the walls' as you say, he'll probably end up blowing something up. He's uh…not used to having so much extra energy."

Dean's mind immediately went to activities that would help Cas burn off all that extra energy, and did he _seriously_ just go there? Gabriel smirked at Dean like he'd just heard that train of thought and asked, "So what are you boys up to?"

"There's a cursed object in the museum here, we're trying to figure out what it is." Sam said, flipping his computer open and getting to his research. Cas' eyes widened and he blasted out a rushed, "OhpleasecanIhelpyouIdon'twanttovibrateintooblivion." Dean and Sam blinked at Cas, having not caught a single word he'd said while Gabriel collapsed into a fit of laughter.

"I'm sorry Cas, you wanna repeat that for us people who have simple human ears?" Cas nodded, took a deep breath and said slowly, "May I assist you?"

"Of course you can," Sam said while Gabriel muttered, "That is _not_ what you said." Cas glared at Gabriel, disappeared from his chair and reappeared nearly in Sam's lap over on the bed. Dean laughed at Sam's startled yelp as he shoved Cas off to the side saying, "Christ it's like licking a battery when I touch you Cas, tone it down."

"Apologies." Cas folded himself into a seated position on the bed by Sam, legs crossed, hands clasped in his lap and attention on Sam. Dean could see from his position on the other side of the room the vibration of the bed.

"Looks like you got your own personal magic fingers Sam." Sam shot Dean a glare, returned his attention to Cas and the two got to working on figuring out what the cursed object could be, bed vibrating beneath them the entire time.

Dean left the three of them to it and took his shower, when he joined them again there was fresh Thai food waiting and Gabriel was telling a story about Osiris.

"Osiris? Isn't he the Egyptian god of…something or other?" Sam rolled his eyes at Dean, stabbed his fork into a container of Thai food and said, "Egyptian god of the afterlife, yeah. The cursed object is an amulet of his; it's what's been killing the people that touch it."

"Sounds fun." Dean turned his attention to the food in front of him, eyed Cas who was still vibrating and said, "You're gonna crash so hard dude." Gabriel chuckled while Cas frowned and said, "I don't crash, I know how to fly rather well."

"No, I mean…all this extra energy you're feeling?" Cas nodded and Dean carried on, "It's going to disappear soon and you're going to have no energy whatsoever, so you're going to pass out or something." Cas' head tilted, his brows furrowed and he got that pinched look on his face whenever he didn't understand something, finally he said, "Angel's don't sleep. I don't see how this applies to me."

Twenty minutes later Gabriel had disappeared, Dean couldn't really blame him, Sam had won the coin toss on who got control of the remote for the TV that night and it was currently spouting the Discovery Channel. Cas was on the bed beside Dean, watching the TV with the same interest that Sam was; Dean was only sharing the bed since he'd wanted his turn with the free magic fingers thanks to the vibrating angel. Sadly the vibrations had stopped about five minutes ago and Dean knew Cas was crashing down, they didn't know how hard he would or what would happen, but he was prepared for _something_ to happen.

He wasn't prepared for the sudden weight against his side though, wasn't prepared for Cas to sigh sleepily, rest his head on Dean's shoulder and proceed to pass out. There was a chuckle from the other side of the room and Sam said, "Looks like you really do have an angel on your shoulder Dean."

"Bite me." Sam chuckled again, shut the TV off and disappeared into the bathroom to do his nightly duties. Dean sighed, tugged Cas upright and maneuvered him until the angel was tucked under the blankets on the other side of the bed. Dean was momentarily glad they had talked Cas into changing into the sleep pants and t-shirt he'd stolen from Dean all those weeks ago. Dean sighed, did his own nightly rituals and slid into bed beside the sleeping angel; he only hoped Cas stuck to his side of the bed like he had last time.

Cas didn't stick to his side of the bed.

Dean woke up in the morning underneath and overly warm blanket shaped like a person. Cas had shifted in his sleep, he was draped over Dean's chest, one leg slung over Dean's thighs, one arm tucked against Dean's side while the other was flung out over the side of the bed, Cas' head was nestled under Dean's chin, the angel's breath warm on his neck.

"Cas, wake up." Dean tried to shift out from underneath him, but Cas was shockingly _heavy_ for a little dude.

"Cas!" Cas grunted, shifted a little, sighed and resumed sleeping.

"Well you two look comfy." Dean jerked and looked over to see Sam and Gabriel grinning at him from the door, a bag of food in Sam's hands.

"Get him off me." Dean grumbled, trying to shift away again but Cas simply grumbled and tightened his hold of Dean's legs with his thigh. Gabriel bounced over to the bed and poked Cas' back, "C'mon bro, time to get up and take care of the nasty cursed object." Cas didn't respond. Gabriel poked him harder until Cas whined like a petulant five year old and growled out, "Quit it."

"Get up." Cas sighed, stretched out in the most _obscene_ way, _all_ of him was just rubbing everywhere against Dean, then he was sighing, settling back down against Dean and muttering, "No."

Gabriel resumed poking Cas while saying, "Would have figured you for a morning person Castiel." Cas blindly reached a hand behind him and slapped Gabriel's hand away, "M'comfy."

"Don't think Dean-o is." Frankly, Dean _was_ comfortable once he looked past his discomfort of having _Cas_ rubbing against him. He was warm and wouldn't mind going back to sleep under the warm, comforting weight that was Cas, but he'd prefer to do that without their respective brothers looking on in unrestrained glee.

"Don't care." Gabriel snorted and Dean rolled his eyes, "Cas, seriously dude, we have a hunt to work on." Dean managed to nudge Cas off enough to where Cas was now lying against Dean's side instead of actually on Dean, but that one stubborn leg continued to hold Dean captive. Dean managed to pat Cas' hip and mutter, "You can take a nap later I promise." Cas sighed again, nuzzled into Dean's chest and pulled the blanket up over his head. Dean sighed, rolled his eyes and growled, "I give up."

"Well I don't!" Gabriel hopped up onto the bed, sat himself on Cas' lower legs, earning a displeased grunt from underneath the blanket, and poked at the bottom of Cas' exposed foot. Cas jerked a little and attempted to drag his leg underneath the covers but found he couldn't due to Gabriel's weight.

"What's this? Is your vessel ticklish?"

"_Gabriel_."

"You don't scare me bro." Gabriel said, ignoring Cas' growl and grabbed his foot and outright tickled Cas. Saying that Cas shrieked was putting it lightly, but Cas _shrieked_ and squirmed against Dean, fighting against Gabriel to get free.

Cas somehow managed to throw the blanket off the two of them, twisted around and shoved at Gabriel hard enough to send the archangel tumbling off the bed. Cas sat upright on his knees, blue eyes still fogged with sleep but still managing a decent glare at Gabriel, his hair was sticking up in a thousand different directions and he a had crease in his cheek from Dean's shirt. He looked _adorable_ and Dean was going to die a thirteen-year-old girl, he knew it.

"Like I said, you don't scare me bro." Gabriel said, tackling Cas back onto the bed with a grin. Dean managed to roll out of the way of any flailing limbs as Gabriel pinned Cas and went back to tickling him. Dean stood by Sam who said, "I never thought our mornings would _ever_ consist of this."

"Never thought we'd see Cas like this." Dean added, peering into the bag of food as the angels yelled at each other in another language on the bed, Cas managing to toss out some well-placed curses in English. Dean had taught him well apparently.

Dean found the bacon and happily munched away as he and Sam watched Gabriel and Cas wrestling around on the bed. Cas was flushed, grinning, laughing, shrieking and feebly pushing at Gabriel as Gabriel laughed and tickled him. Dean had never seen Cas look so human before, but he was glad his friend had managed to loosen up a little, glad that he and Gabriel were bonding and that Gabriel was choosing not to be such a dick about things.

Two hours later found them tagging along with a tour group that was making their way through the Egyptian exhibits, tour guide chattering along excitedly. Sam and Dean were standing between the two angels when the tour guide mentioned something about the hieroglyphs, which caused Cas to huff out a snort and cross his arms over his chest, Gabriel chuckled and said, "Don't be offended bro, they had to think of _something_." Sam looked between the two, his eyes wide and curious, Dean groaned internally, Sam was about to launch into geek mode.

Sam shoved Dean out of the way, situated himself by Castiel and hissed, "You were _there_?" Cas looked at Sam like he was an idiot and said, "Of course I was. _Someone_ had to teach them to write their language, the hieroglyphs are too complex for them to have come up with on their own."

"You taught the ancient Egyptians how to _write_?" Sam was practically yelling now, drawing looks from some of the tourists around them.

"Calm down Sammy."

"Dean, Cas taught an ancient civilization how to _write_, how can I be calm?"

"I taught them many things." Sam gaped at Cas while Dean rolled his eyes and sighed; of course, his angel would be the nerd that taught people things instead of being a cool angel and just destroying shit. Gabriel sidled up alongside Dean and whispered, "Uriel was the one that destroyed shit, Cas just lectured him on how to do everything the proper way. Drove Uriel insane."

Dean rolled his eyes and muttered, "Naturally." Sam grabbed hold of Dean's arm and started shaking him while exclaiming, "Dean! Cas is the one who _invented_ the devil's trap! He's the one that taught it to the first hunters! This is so…so-"

"Sam! Calm down dude, you're going to burst something." Dean slapped at his brothers hands and Sam took a deep breath, reigned in his excitement and said to Cas, "We're going to have a talk later tonight." Cas nodded, looking both pleased and amused by Sam's reaction. Dean didn't share his brother's enthusiasm but he _was_ impressed, he just had other things to worry about right now.

"Okay, me and Sam here are going to go get the amulet, you two stay out here and make a distraction." Dean glared over at Gabriel and asked, "Why don't you just flap in there like an angel and grab it? Gabriel simply smiled, dragged Sam over to a door labeled 'employee's only' and said, "Because this is more fun. You know what to do bro!"

Cas making a distraction, this Dean had to see.

They moved towards the front of the tour group and stood off a bit to the side, waiting for the tour guide to stop talking about how she thought the pyramids were built. Cas crossed his arms when she was done and said loud enough for everyone to hear, "Your theory is interesting but you're completely wrong of course." Everyone's attention turned to Cas, even the people not part of the tour group, more interested in a confrontation than information. It served its purpose though, no one noticed Sam and Gabriel slipping through the door behind the group of people, not even the security guards who were watching them, tensed as if they thought Cas was going to bust a gun out and shoot everyone up for being incompetent.

Cas launched into a detailed report about how the Egyptians had used a series of ramps and leverage to get the giant stones into place for the pyramids, and in later years an impressive use of a pulley system. Everyone listened with rapt attention as he talked, Dean couldn't blame them, Cas with his hair still sticking out in every direction, a pair of Dean's ratty jeans and a worn out Henley and old boots, looked nothing like an intellectual who would know about the ancient ways of pyramid building.

Dean noticed Sam and Gabriel slipping back out through the door, Gabriel shooting them a wide grin and a thumbs up. Dean nudged Cas to get him to shut up so they could leave finally.

"Also, Imhotep was chief architect to Djoser _not_ Khufu. You should get your facts right if you plan on educating hundreds of people on this subject every day." The tour guide blinked at Cas, nodded and Dean dragged Cas away before he could take over the tour himself.

"You're such a nerd Cas." Dean muttered as they joined up with Sam and Gabriel at the exit. Cas smiled slightly, rolled his eyes and asked Gabriel, "Did you get it?"

"Of course I did, don't doubt my abilities."

"So, what do we have to do to get the curse off?" Sam asked, eying the golden amulet that Gabriel presented.

"Nothing, I'll just return it to Osiris, he's probably grumpy that it's been missing for so long." Before anyone could say anything about Gabriel had disappeared, leaving the three of them standing by the Impala.

"Well, that was the easiest case ever." Dean muttered, climbing into the car. Sam nodded his agreement, waited until they were on the road back to the hotel until he turned in his seat to stare at Cas in the backseat and burst out with, "Seriously Cas, how old are you really?" Cas gave Sam his blank 'I don't understand' look and turned his attention out the window.

"That means older than dirt and he doesn't want to say so we won't tease him." Dean commented, grinning at Cas in the rearview mirror when the angel turned to glare at him. Dean changed his mind about going back to the hotel and headed for the diner down the street instead. Sam immediately peppering Cas with questions about what else he'd done in his life and how much the books got wrong when they were seated. Dean simply rolled his eyes at the two, called them nerds under his breath and ate his pie.

He wouldn't have them any other way though.

* * *

So I know we don't know much about Cas' history (but oh how I wish we did, he seems so _interesting_) but I was re-watching 4.16 (On the Head of a Pin) and Cas was talking about the devil's trap, he said he'd "made" it, so that kinda spurred that part. And well, yeah. I don't have anything else to say, I did, but I forgot. Anyway, hope you liked! There will be more soon.


	7. Chapter 7

I'm sorry if this is quick and short, but I wanted to get it finished since my AU is eating my brain and won't really allow me to write anything else, no matter how much I fight and scream at myself.

But yeah, I hope you guys like it, and I promise a longer not so rushed thing later.

* * *

"Are we sure this is a demon?" Both Sam and Cas looked over at Dean as they entered the zoo, Sam rolled his eyes while Cas chose to ignore him and simply looked around with wide eyes.

"Yeah Dean, there are omens and everything fits. Even Cas said it's a demon, right Cas?"

"Yes." Was the angel's response, he was distracted by a little girl running by with a large cloud of cotton candy held out in front of her. Dean sighed, rolled his shoulders and asked, "But why animals?"

"The demon may have simply gone insane, or it's bored." Cas returned his attention to the brothers, Dean was walking in the middle of the two, trying to remember the last time he'd been in a zoo. He really couldn't remember.

They'd finally left Bobby's a few days ago when they'd gotten wind of a case, Cas had finished his healing and had urged the two to go on and investigate the weird goings on in the zoo. No one had died, but animals had up and disappeared, some had gotten out of the cages when everything was locked up tight and some just acted strangely. When Dean and Sam had arrived they'd investigated, found no reason for the animals to be acting like they had, they'd called in Cas who had scoped the area out and come back with the information of it being a demon.

"Bored? Does it not realize there's an apocalypse going on?" Cas shrugged, a motion he must have picked up from one of them and they moved further into the zoo. Dean didn't see the point, if no one was getting hurt they didn't really need to be here, but it was the only case Sam had managed to find that hadn't already been taken care of or in the process of being taken care of by other hunters.

"Some demons prefer to possess animals, it is possible." Dean sighed at Cas and the three stopped to stare at the giraffes, one of which wandered over to them and stretched its neck forward, searching for crackers. Cas smiled and held his hand out, stretching his arm and body over the fence until it looked like he was about to fall over.

"Cas you don't have anything to give it, it's not going to-" Dean stopped with the giraffe licked Cas' palm with the very tip of it's tongue. Cas smiled again and turned his attention back on the brothers; both of them were staring at him with raised eyebrows.

"What are you? The giraffe whisperer?" Cas gave Dean his 'I don't understand that reference' frown while Sam sighed and muttered, "Come on, the last animal that was acting strange was one of the koala bears."

"A koala bear? Really?"

"Koala bears can be quite dangerous." Cas said as they weaved through the afternoon crowd, there was a group of school children chattering loudly behind them and a family pushing a stroller ahead of them, arguing over which animal to see next.

"Of course they can."

When they reached the koala bear exhibit Dean decided that they weren't as cute as people made them out to be. They actually looked a little freaky.

"The demon is no longer possessing it." Cas said, leaning against the railing in front of them, watching as one of the koalas slowly moved down the tree and waddled along the ground until it came to its water source.

"Can't you do your angel mojo thing and just point us in the right direction?" Sam glared at Dean over Cas' head and Dean shrugged, if they were going to have Cas helping them he might as well _help _them. Cas nodded, his shoulders slumped and his eyes glazed over, Sam frowned at him and quietly asked, "Cas? You okay?"

No response.

"Did I break him?" Dean gently shook Cas' shoulder, resulting in the angel swaying gently backward until Sam stopped his movement with a hand to his back. Cas snapped back to it a moment later, eyes brightening, back and shoulders going rigid with tension again, "I don't sense a demon anywhere in the zoo."

"What the hell just happened to you?" Dean had yet to remove his hand from Cas' shoulder and Sam had yet to remove his from the angel's back.

"You told me to get on with the 'angel mojo' so I did."

"You can do that?" Sam looked like he was about to nerd out with Cas again, so Dean rolled his eyes and started walking back towards the exit, dragging Cas along with him. When he didn't hear Sam following them he paused and saw that both Sam and Cas were giving him the dreaded 'puppy dog look'. He had hoped the two of them would never realize that they could join forces and work together against Dean. Sam had always worked that look to his advantage, all wrinkled brow and sad eyes. Cas had learned his from somewhere; Dean figured Sam must have coached him a little since the angel was doing a damn fine job of weakening Dean's defenses against whatever it was they had planned.

Sam approached and Cas ramped up his look, the blue of his eyes going liquid and soft, his eyes widened and his forehead creased, the fucking bastards had practiced this, he could tell.

"What the hell do you two want?" Dean released his hold on Cas, crossed his arms over his chest and glared at their pathetic looks.

"Well, I—we were wondering if we could stay for awhile? See the zoo? It's been a while since we've been in a zoo Dean, and Cas has never been."

"What's it matter that Cas has never been? I'm pretty sure he could go flap off to wherever and see them face to face."

"It's a human experience Dean, c'mon. We've got nowhere else to be right now, especially since the demon isn't here anymore we won't know if it's back until later anyway." Dean sighed, he usually had a small fighting chance against Sam's puppy dog look, but when it was teamed up with Cas' he was fucking doomed.

"Fine. And just for the record, I hate you both." Sam grinned at him, Cas gave him that small private smile that he saved just for Dean and then the two were off, Sam dragging Cas along behind him, yacking on about panda bears and polar bears and whatever the hell else.

"Nerds. I'm surrounded by nerds."

Dean spent the next hour following the two around, Sam listening intently to all the information Cas gave him on the individual animals, more information than the zoo could ever have on their little plaques. Dean personally didn't mind, he enjoyed seeing the animals as much as any other person, but the two were geeking out and he felt like a damn third wheel on their nerd date.

They stopped for lunch, Dean and Sam sitting at a picnic table enjoying their hamburgers and fries while Cas wandered off and stood by the wooden fence surrounding the petting zoo, watching all the little kids feed the goats and whatever else was in there.

A goat wandered over to the fence and Cas knelt a little and poked his hand through the fence to stroke its head. Sam finished his food, stood and asked, "Wanna come into the petting zoo with us?"

"No I don't want to go into the _petting zoo_." Sam shrugged, gathered his trash, threw it out and headed over to Cas, grabbed the angel by the hoodie he was wearing and dragged him towards the entrance.

Dean finished his own food, threw his own trash out and went and stood by the fence to watch Cas and Sam act like little kids. Dean was okay with it; Sam needed time to just have some fun, not only a break like they'd gotten a Bobby's but also a chance to enjoy himself outside of research and books. Cas just deserved it because he was Cas and was just entertaining in his fumbling attempts at being human like.

Sam immediately headed for where the rabbits were, stooping down to chat with a little girl who was holding one of them. Cas just plopped himself down on the ground, sitting Indian style in the hay and dirt and Dean didn't even want to think what else he could be sitting in. Dean opened his mouth to shout to the angel that he actually had to go and pet the animals and feed them instead of waiting for them to come to him.

Cas like always, proved Dean immediately wrong. Five ducklings immediately converged on the angel, quacking and crawling all over him, nibbling on his shoelaces and the strings on his hoodie. Cas fed them some of the bread he'd gotten when he and Sam had entered and they gobbled it up. Soon a couple goats had joined the ducks, followed by a stray rabbit, a pig and a few sheep.

Dean's eyebrows rose, Sam stood and watched and several people took some pictures. When more goats, sheep, ducks and chickens started crowding around Cas the angel stood with a frown, brushing the off the seat of his jeans as he headed over for Sam.

The animals followed him.

Both Sam and Cas frowned at the animals as Cas veered off course and headed for the exit, the animals following after him. Cas turned off course again, heading for the back of the enclosure at a jog, the animals picking up their pace to keep up with him. Sam exited the enclosure and came over to Dean; they both stood watching as Cas came towards them, his little entourage following along behind him.

"Are they possessed?" Dean asked quietly, he didn't see any black eyes and they weren't acting entirely demonic, just…weird.

"I don't think so, Cas wasn't looking to freaked out earlier." They watched as Cas ducked behind a tree and didn't reappear. The group of animals stopped, looked around and when Dean felt the air behind him shift ever so slightly he turned to see Cas standing behind him, ducking down a little to hide.

"Cas? What's going on with your little fans?" Cas peeked around Dean, the animals were still looking fairly confused as to where Cas had disappeared too, "I believe they picked up on my grace, they'll want to be near it."

"Picked up on your grace? How come it doesn't happen all the time then?" Cas hesitated a little, a faint blush creeping up his cheeks, "I'm afraid I relaxed a little too much around them."

Dean opened his mouth to respond, but the excited quacking that was steadily getting louder interrupted them. Cas had been rediscovered.

"We should go." Dean turned and grabbed Cas by his sleeve and started walking away, hoping that the animals didn't know how to get out of their fenced in area, he didn't know how to explain their sudden fascination with Cas to the zoo people.

They weren't so lucky though, the goats, sheep, pigs, ducks and even a freakin' llama shouldered people out of the way and made their way out of the petting zoo and made a beeline for Cas.

"We can't even have a normal day at the zoo can we?"

"Apparently not." Sam muttered, he picked up the pace a little, his long legs stretching out and enabling him to move ahead of Dean and Cas.

"Dean, I can simply-" Dean ducked away from Cas' raised hand, the index and middle finger held together in the all to familiar way of Angel Air.

"No! We're not having the headlines read 'three people mysteriously vanish into thin air at the zoo yesterday'. We're walking!" Cas scowled at him, tugged his arm free from Dean's grip and started running after Sam, the animals running after the pair of them. Dean ignored the people pointing and taking pictures, simply sighed and rolled his eyes, taking off after his brother and angel.

They managed to make it back to the hotel in one piece; Cas had managed to save Dean from a wad of llama spit that had been aimed at his head. Dean flopped over onto his bed when they entered the room, Sam collapsed into a chair around the small table and Cas carefully sat himself across from Sam, his hands buried in the front pocket of his sweatshirt.

"Well that was a fun day, minus the baby animals trying to eat Cas alive."

"Don't be a-" Sam was cut off by a quiet quack coming from the pocket of Cas' sweatshirt, both Sam and Dean turned to look at him.

"Cas, please don't tell me you didn't take a duckling from the zoo." Cas turned his wide blue eyes on Dean and said nothing.

"Cas?"

"You told me not to tell you." Sam burst into laughter while Dean resisted the urge to smack his against the nearest wall. Did the angel have to take everything so damn literally?

Another quiet quack came from the pocket.

"Cas…" Cas sighed and pulled the duckling from the pocket, holding it up to his face where it gently nibbled at his nose.

"It was lonely." This time Dean smacked his hand to his forehead, "Damnit, Cas! You can't just take animals from the zoo!" Cas actually _pouted_ at Dean, his lower lip stuck out a little, eyes widened and went that liquid blue again. Fucking cheater.

"Cas…"

"I'll return him in the morning." Cas turned his attention to the duckling and stroked a finger over it's little head, Dean almost puked from the cuteness of the little duck nuzzling into Cas' cheek, making happy, content little quacks as Cas stroked it.

When morning came, Dean totally didn't take a picture of Cas scrunched up sleeping in the chair, the duckling sleeping on top of his head, burrowed into the mess of hair. He also didn't post it on the Internet or email it to Bobby.


	8. Chapter 8

So, I was re-watching 5.13 the other day and the part where Michael was talking to Dean about Lucifer ("I practically raised him, I took care of him") kind of gave me this idea. Then I was chatting with the awesome **Susangel **and that small idea spawned into this monstrosity. Probably doesn't fit to well with what I've got going in this story so far…but it had to be done.

Also! **Scoobert0** is effing _amazing_, you guys wanted a visual of Cas and the duckling, and she went ahead and made a visual! Go check it out here:

scoobert0. deviantart . com / art / Cas-and-the-Duckling-200912356 (get rid of the spaces and you're good) It's awesome, I can't stop staring at it.

Another quick note, part of this fic was inspired by **crOwnlEssG** and her fic _Notes Tied to Balloons_, go check it out. Seriously. Read it.

* * *

"For the record, I _hate_ witches."

"She didn't even do anything to you Dean."

"Doesn't matter, she was turning people into toads, who the hell does that?"

"It was an accident, she didn't know the spell would have the kind of effect on people."

"She's still not entirely innocent either." Sam sighed and looked over to Cas who had been watching the brothers bicker like it had been a tennis match.

"All we have to do is destroy the book, give her a good talking to and she'll stop and the people who have been turned into toads will turn back to themselves?" Sam asked Cas, clearly done with Dean's arguing and ready to move on.

"Yes."

"Good, let's go then." Dean hopped out of the Impala and headed for the front door of their annoying teenage witch. He really hated witches; even if they meant good, they always ended up doing something bad in the process. What the hell kind of person turned people into _toads_?

Dean soon learned that obnoxious sixteen-year-old cheerleaders who had wanted to get back at her boyfriend for cheating was the kind of person that turned people into toads. Admittedly Sam had been right, it was mostly an accident. She'd mispronounced a few words and turned someone else into a toad, so she'd tried again when she realized her boyfriend was still human, ending up turning a different person into a toad.

The brothers gave her a good talking to, shot her some thinly veiled threats and took her book and the few authentic witchy ingredients she had managed to collect. On their way out of her bedroom Cas, who had been silent the entire time, paused by her dresser and picked up a container of what Dean had thought to be body glitter and added it to the pile in Sam's arms.

Obnoxious teenager promptly snatched it back, "No! You can't take that!"

Cas glared, "You don't know what will happen to someone if they come into contact with it."

"No way, I spent a month's allowance on this stuff, you can't take it." She glared at Cas who glared back, reached forward and snatched it from her death grip like there was nothing to it. Obnoxious teenager screeched something at Cas, made a grab for the glittery substance and somewhere along the line the top fell off and silvery-purple glitter shot out and right into Cas' face.

"Now look what you did! It's all wasted!" Obnoxious teenager sounded on the verge of tears and a temper tantrum, Cas, once again, glared at her but the affect was lessened due to the fact he had the glittery substance clinging to his eyelashes and hair.

"I hate you!" Instead of dignifying her with a response Cas knocked her out with a touch to the forehead.

"What the hell is that stuff Cas?" Sam looked how Dean felt, like he was trying to hold in his laughter because Cas looked absolutely ridiculous.

"It's...it..." Cas trailed off, his eyes fluttered and his nose scrunched up.

"You okay?" Dean stepped forward, prepared to catch Cas if he suddenly passed out due to whatever it was that had hit him in the face.

"I-I don't like this f-feeling."

"What feeling?" Cas shook his head, frowned and let out the most polite sounding sneeze Dean had ever heard. It didn't throw the angel's head forward or cause him to rock back on his heels like most sneezes, it just simply came out as a quiet, "_Hehfft!_" and caused Cas' eyes to squeeze shut.

"That was probably the most adorable sneeze I've ever heard." Sam snickered from behind Dean. Dean snorted and nodded, then stopped when a larger more violent sneeze came out of the angel, who promptly vanished afterwards.

"What'd he do? Sneeze himself off to India?" Sam shrugged and opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted by the flutter of wings behind them. Dean turned and stared, what was in front of them was clearly Cas, but then again _not_ Cas.

"What the hell happened to you?" Cas glared up at them, and in Sam's case _way_ up. It was still Cas, Dean could tell, there was the same messy hair and the same wide blue eyes staring up at him, but he was distinctly child-shaped instead of man-shaped.

Dean couldn't help it. He laughed.

Cas glared again, which quickly turned into a pout, which was soon followed by tears. It only made Dean laugh harder, Castiel angel of the _Lord_ was pouting and crying because Dean was laughing at him. Before Sam or Dean could say anything, the angel had vanished again.

"Dean! This isn't funny!" Sam snapped, looking a little panicked.

"No, it's hilarious Sam. Our angel has turned into a kid because he got glitter to the face!"

"Dean, we don't know how it's affected him, what if he comes across demons? Or other angels?" That thought sobered Dean up.

"We need to call Bobby, and Gabriel." Dean nodded and the two left the house and headed for the Impala, Sam already on the phone with Bobby, describing what happened. Dean tried calling Gabriel at the number he'd given them but naturally the archangel didn't answer, he never really did unless it was Cas calling.

"Bobby said he'll start researching and that whenever we manage to find Cas to get him up there. Anything from Gabriel?"

"Dick isn't answering his phone." Sam grunted and they reached the hotel, both started packing up their things when they got inside.

"How the hell are we supposed to find Cas? He could be in Timbuktu for all we know." Sam paused in his packing and looked over at Dean, "We could summon him? Didn't that work when you and Bobby tried?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you 'don't know'?"

"Well I don't know if it was Cas responding to the summoning that had him show up or the fact that he needed to talk to me in the first place that had him showing up." Sam sighed tossed his duffel onto the floor and opened his mouth to complain, but that's when Gabriel decided to show up with a kicking and screaming Castiel tossed over his shoulder.

"I'm too old for this shit FYI," Gabriel said over Cas' screaming, "I've already been through this with him before, I don't want to be doing it again!"

"Wait, what?" Gabriel sighed and shouted, "Castiel! Quit it!"

"Put me _down_!" Cas whined, little fists pounding on Gabriel's back. The oversized trench coat and suit get up had been replaced with jeans, a t-shirt, and little tennis shoes that actually lit up along the heel whenever they connected with something solid.

"Will you behave?" There was a moments silence and then Cas must have nodded because Gabriel set him down and Sam repeated his question, "What do you mean you've done this before?"

"Well Cas certainly didn't raise himself."

"Wait...you're telling me angels _grow up_?" Dean asked, looking down at Cas who was glaring up at everyone.

"Something like that yeah."

"And you were his...parent?" Sam looked like he was going to blow something in his brain, he'd always been curious about angels, constantly pestering Cas to tell him things, Cas never did of course and it drove Sam up the wall since it wasn't something he could just find a book on.

"It's more like being a mentor than a parent. But no, it wasn't my job to raise him, that fell on Anael, but little Castiel here was quite the handful so I helped out when I could." Dean stared up at the ceiling; this was all a little too weird for his liking.

"Anael, as in Anna?" Sam looked to Dean with a wide smile on his face, Dean didn't like that look.

"That's the one."

"Dude, you totally had sex with Cas' mom." Sam said in between laughing. Dean made a face and tried to not think about that, _at all_. Gabriel chuckled and said, "Like I said, I've already done this before and I'm not doing it again. Cas may seem like a sweet, innocent guy when he's all grown up but as a child, he was an epic pain in the ass. I've got him tethered to you two muttonheads so he won't go flying off to Heaven or anything. Also, don't piss him off."

"Why?"

"Remember Pompeii, Sammy?" Sam made a face at Gabriel's calling him 'Sammy' but nodded, even Dean knew about Pompeii.

"Well, that was one of Cas' temper tantrums back in the day." And with that, Gabriel vanished, leaving Cas standing in the middle of the hotel room with his arms crossed; glaring at the two of them like this was all their fault.

"Oh quit with the glaring, it's not like we made you pick up the glitter." Cas huffed, sat down in the middle of the floor and said, "You wouldn't let me keep the duck."

"That's what this is about? Are you serious?" Cas re-crossed his arms and continued glaring up at Dean while Dean glared back at him.

"Alright you two, break it up, we should head to Bobby's."

"Fine, but we're stopping for lunch on our way out of town. Come on grumpy, out to the car." Cas grumbled something under his breath but followed Dean and Sam out to the Impala.

Thirty minutes later found them in a diner on the outside of town, Dean and Cas sitting on one side of the booth while Sam hogged the other side. Their waitress had cooed at Cas for a few minutes and had finally given up on getting a reaction that wasn't a head tilt and blank look and had wandered off telling them to call her over when they were ready.

"Want anything to eat Cas?" Cas paused in kicking his feet against their booth and looked over at Dean, little eyebrow raised, then finally he said, "I want a root beer float."

"Dude, there's no way I'm giving you sugar when you're in that small of a body, you would end up vibrating into the next county."

"I _want_ a root beer _float_!"

"To bad you're not getting one!" Cas' face scrunched up and turned a lovely shade of red.

"Dean, remember what Gabriel said?"

"No?"

"Dean, you shouldn't piss him off."

"Not my fault he's got a temper on him." Sam rolled his eyes and sighed, "Dean he's a little kid, they don't have the control that we do as adults. Cas has always been impatient and temperamental with us, especially you, now that he can't control himself it's going to be worse."

"Great."

"Just get him a damn root beer float."

"No way! I'm not rewarding this kind of behavior with a root beer float."

Every single piece of glass in the diner exploded.

Fifteen minutes after _that_ they were piled back in the Impala with bags of take out and a root beer float. Thankfully, they weren't too far from Bobby's and would be there by tomorrow morning if Dean didn't stop. Cas was quiet in the backseat for a few hours, happily enjoying his root beer float and then happily flipping through one of Sam's books and practically rewriting the thing.

Then, "I could fly us there."

"No."

"But we could be there by now!"

"Not happening." Cas sighed and hung himself over the front seat in between Sam and Dean, "But this way is so _slow_."

"Doesn't matter, you're not flying us anywhere."

"I'm _bored_ though." Dean rolled his eyes skyward, Cas was worse than Sam had been.

"Well, we could play a game?" Sam suggested, turning a little in his seat so he could look at Cas properly. Cas frowned over at Sam then wiggled over the seat to sit between the two of them, "What kind of game?"

"Uh, well…" Sam trailed off, shooting Dean a hopeless look. Dean shrugged and kept his attention on the road, the only games he knew that could be played in the car was I-Spy and twenty questions and he had a suspicion that Cas wouldn't appreciate those games like they should be appreciated.

"Oh, here," Sam pulled his phone out from his pocket and brought up one of the games he had loaded on it. Cas leaned over to look at the small screen while Sam showed him how to play.

"Get it?" Cas nodded and eagerly took the phone from Sam; he leaned back until he was leaning against Dean, his attention focused on the game he was playing.

"What game did you show him?"

"Solitaire." Dean snorted and went back to focusing on the road, trying to ignore the weight that was Cas' smaller frame leaning against his arm.

Cas moved back to his spot in the backseat when they stopped for gas, Sam's phone held in front of his face as he sprawled across the seat.

"Weird seeing him like this." Dean muttered to Sam while they waited in line to pay for their stuff. Sam looked out the door towards the car; Cas had a foot hanging out of the open back window.

"He's like himself, just without all the control adults have."

"So you're telling me he really does get bored while he's sitting in the backseat of the car?"

"Probably, he's an angel Dean; he can probably multitask like you wouldn't believe. He flies all over the world in a blink of an eye so yeah, I think he gets bored when he's stuck in the backseat of a car that takes _days_ to make it to the other side of the country."

"We should get him a puzzle book then, for when he gets back to himself." Sam rolled his eyes at Dean and headed outside saying he'd call Bobby and tell him they were a few hours out.

When the battery in Sam's phone died Cas let out an exasperated sigh and tossed it back into the front seat with them and sprawled himself out on the backseat again. He was blissfully silent for several miles before he snickered and asked, "Are we there yet?"

Dean turned to Sam and said, "I'll duct tape his mouth shut if you hold him down."

"You didn't answer my question," came from the backseat.

"No, we're not."

Five minutes later, "Are we there yet?"

"No."

Ten minutes after that, "Are we there _now_?"

"_No_."

Thirty seconds later, "Are we there yet?"

"I'm going to shoot him."

"Dean, you can't shoot Cas."

"Are we-"

"Gabriel is putting you up to this isn't he? I know he is, I just don't know how." Cas stared back at Dean in the rearview mirror, all wide-eyed innocence that Dean didn't believe for a second.

"Just…entertain yourself for a little longer, we'll be at Bobby's in a few hours." Cas nodded and was quiet again for several miles, then he sucked his lips into his mouth and pushed them out with a _pop_.

Both Dean and Sam cringed. Cas leaned forward between their two seats and did it again. Dean's hands tightened on the steering wheel and Sam looked ready to toss Cas out the window. There was the sound of a flutter of wings and Gabriel appeared in the backseat.

"You two are so easy to mess with."

"I knew you had something to do with it!"

"Have to take advantage of little bro here willing to screw with you, he's usually too serious." Gabriel ruffled Cas' hair with a smile while Cas made an annoyed sound and swatted at Gabriel's hands.

"Well I have to admit the stick up his ass is growing on me after seeing him without it." Gabriel shook his head at Dean, produced a Mars bar and handed it over to Cas, who made a pleased sound and tore into it.

"Aw man, don't give him sugar!" Gabriel only grinned at Dean and handed Cas another candy bar.

Thankfully, Gabriel managed to keep Cas entertained for the remainder of their drive, he doesn't know what the two did but they had just _stared _at each other, occasionally smiling or laughing at the other. They were probably having a silent conversation that Dean and Sam would never be privy to.

When they finally reached Bobby's it was the middle of the night and Dean had never been so eager for sleep as he was in that moment.

Bobby greeted them at the door, took them all in then stared at Cas who stared right back from where he was leaning against Gabriel's leg.

"Who the hell picked out your shoes kid?" Cas frowned and looked down at his shoes, bounced once and took in the flashing red and blue lights in the heel and said, "Gabriel."

Gabriel raised his hands and said, "Flashing shoes are awesome."

"Idjits."

"Did you find out anything Bobby?" Sam asked as they followed the older hunter into the house and into the library.

"Yeah, the powder is supposed to be used in small doses, it'll wear off in a day or two. It's supposed to make whoever puts it on 'youthful'."

"And since Cas got a face full of the stuff…" They all turned to look at Cas who had moved over to the stack of books by Bobby's desk and was currently flipping through one of them, shaking his head and making disapproving noises at it.

"Something wrong with my books boy?" Cas looked up at Bobby, eyes widened before they narrowed and he said, "It's got everything _wrong_."

"How can everything be wrong?" Bobby moved over to where Cas was standing and took the book from him, flipping through the pages.

"Well, they're going to be at that all night so I'd go get your sleep while you can." Gabriel said, smiling at where Bobby was trying to talk Cas out of writing in the book and instead taking notes. Dean could see that Bobby really would stay up all night talking about this crap.

The sounds of Bobby and Cas arguing over his books followed Dean and Sam up the stairs.

* * *

Dean found himself down in the kitchen the next morning watching Cas devour bowl after bowl of Cocoa Pebbles. It was rather horrifying how quickly he was putting the stuff away, but Dean just couldn't _look away_. Sam was watching with the same horrified fascination while Gabriel sat grinning at his little brother wolfing the chocolaty cereal down.

"I can't look away." Dean muttered, Cas finished his current bowl, let out a hefty burp, grinned at Dean and hopped down off his chair.

"Damn Cas." Sam whispered, that had to have been at least three boxes that had been eaten like they were nothing. Cas simply grinned up at them and disappeared into the living room where Bobby was currently researching a hunt for another hunter. They could hear his gruff tones and Cas' lighter ones floating in through the doorway as they talked.

"Well…that was…interesting."

"That's putting it lightly." Dean nodded at Sam, Gabriel chuckled and vanished while Bobby yelled, "Why don't you two idjits come in here and help us out?"

Cas eventually grew bored during the day and took to wandering around the house, Bobby, not wanting him to destroy anything found some of the toys Dean and Sam had played with when they had been younger and stayed at Bobby's house on occasion. Cas had stared at the box full of Legos and action figures then had given Bobby a very unimpressed look and ignored the toys the rest of the day.

Then Cas found the bubble wrap.

Dean didn't know where he'd gotten it from, but the little angel was instantly enthralled with the stuff and it kept him busy.

Then, unfortunately for all of them, Cas figured out how to pop the little bubbles.

_Pop_.

Dean and Sam exchanged looks and Dean asked, "Seriously?" Sam shrugged and returned his attention to his laptop.

_Pop._

"Cas! Take it outside man!"

_Popopopopopopopopop._

Bobby pulled out a bottle of his good whiskey, Sam plugged his headphones in and Dean was left with listening to the occasional pop from the bubble wrap.

_Pop_.

"I'm gonna kill him." Bobby shrugged at Dean, refilled his glass and Dean cringed as another _pop_ came from behind him. Bobby didn't seem to be too annoyed by it all, was probably used to when Sam and Dean had been kids and causing a ruckus wherever they went, and Bobby and Cas seemed to be getting along just fine lately.

_Pop. Pop._

Dean spun around in his chair and glared at Cas who froze with his fingers about to pop another little bubble. Cas glared back at him, little chin tilted and jaw set. Dean would never admit it, but Cas was damn adorable this way, even if he was an epic pain in the ass.

"Don't you dare pop that."

_Pop._

"That's it." Dean shot out of his chair headed over to Cas and snatched the bubble wrap from his hands, glaring down at him. Sam was chuckling from behind his laptop screen and Bobby was watching it all with an amused expression.

Cas' lower lip trembled, his eyes widened and filled with tears, "Oh come on. I told you stop!" Cas sniffed, wiped his eyes, clambered up to his feet, ran into the library, and climbed up into Bobby's lap. Dean's eyebrows rose, expecting Bobby to push Cas away or call him an idjit, but no, Bobby, the traitor, went about soothing Cas.

Bobby glared over at Dean and snapped, "You couldn't have asked him nicely?" Dean opened his mouth and only ended up shutting it, yeah, he probably could have not snapped at Cas. But seriously, the sound of bubble wrap got old!

Cas shifted in Bobby's lap until he was looking over at Dean, Dean frowned as Cas actually _smirked_ at him and before he could think to warn Bobby that Cas was up to something Cas had snatched Bobby's hat from his head and had bolted into the kitchen with it.

"Why you little…" Dean snickered at Bobby and said, "Serves you right."

The rest of the day was spent keeping Castiel as entertained as possible, they'd learned if he got bored he got mischievous and when he got mischievous, bad things happened. It was hard to keep him entertained though since he wasn't a normal child, he didn't need to sleep or take a break, regular things that any child would love was unimpressive to an angelic being. He also had his angel mojo intact and he used that to his advantage.

Sam had been in the shower when Cas had used his angel mojo to turn off the hot water, leaving him under a freezing cold stream. While Dean could appreciate that little prank, he didn't appreciate Cas using it to make every bottle of beer impossible to open. Bobby also didn't appreciate that Cas had made it his personal goal to see how many times he could steal Bobby's hat. The older hunter tried to be gruff about it, but he couldn't quite hide his smile every time Cas managed to snag his hat and bolt off with a giggle.

Thankfully Gabriel showed up later in the afternoon, "This is why I always liked little Cas best. He didn't have the stick up his ass yet so he was always willing to let me kidnap him from Anna to go and mess with the other angels."

Gabriel managed to snag Castiel around the waist as he went running by, Bobby's hat clutched in his hands yet again. Cas grinned up at Gabriel and Dean took the moment to snatch Bobby's hat back and growled, "Please do something with him, he's driving us nuts."

"He'll be back to himself tonight."

"I don't care. Please, just do something with him. He's always got to be _doing_ something." Dean was ready to just pass out, he'd been the one left chasing after Cas all day since both Bobby and Sam pulled the 'doing research, very important' line.

"He's just feeling cooped up; wanna go for a fly kiddo?" Cas nodded enthusiastically and the two disappeared without another word. Dean let out a happy sigh and went and collapsed on the couch.

"I'm never ever having kids now." Dean muttered to Sam a few minutes later. Sam snorted and nodded his agreement.

By the time the two angels returned to Bobby's it was nearing eight and they were all getting ready to sit down and enjoy some of Bobby's cooking. Dean was relieved to see Cas standing in his trench coat and suit combination, "Glad to see you grown up again man."

Cas nodded and looked down at himself, "It is good to be back."

Gabriel snorted, sighed and said, "I for one am going to miss having someone to help me mess with the Winchesters." Cas ignored Gabriel and moved into the kitchen, eyes full of his usual curiosity as he looked at what Bobby was cooking.

Dean paused in his journey to the fridge to grab a beer when Cas looked over to him, a faint glimmer of mischief in his eyes. Dean had only ever seen that look once before, standing in a motel parking lot pleading the angel to help with Lilith. His eyebrows shot up and Cas gave him a slight smile before turning and snatching Bobby's hat from his head and vanishing with a laugh.

Bobby was stunned into silence before he ground out, "Damn idjit angels!"

Dean could help it. He laughed.

* * *

So the bubble wrap was brought up from the latest part of **crOwnlEssG's** fic, where Cas was so into his bubbles that I just imagined him playing with bubble wrap, she told me to write it as a little "after" more modern way of playing with bubbles. So I did! Once again, go read her fic. It's awesome.


	9. Chapter 9

So, here's this finally. I apologize for the delay, this was supposed to be done days ago, but the ADD I seem to experience when I'm writing kicked in hardcore. I was working on five stories at once at one point during the production of this chapter. Hence why the mood kind of swings all over the place.

I've also finally decided on a plot for my Big Bang. Hooray!

It's a highschool AU...how's that sound? (yeah, I know..._another_ AU, but they're my favorite). So yeah, there's that. Thank you to everyone who volunteered to poke and prod and cheer me on and beta for me when I get started on writing this. I love talking to you guys, it's great fun to be able to squee and obsess over the show with people who actually understand instead of look at you funny.

Anywho. I hope this chapter is worth the wait, since I had a great deal of fun writing it.

* * *

Dean was falling. Quite literally.

He'd been tossed off the edge by the demon he'd been fighting with, and now Dean found himself forty stories up with nothing under his feet. For a moment, it had been like in the roadrunner cartoons where the coyote finds himself suspended in midair for a second before plummeting to Earth.

Dean heard Sam shout his name, saw Gabriel haul Sam back from leaping off the edge, saw Castiel shove his sword into the throat of the demon that had just tossed Dean over the edge and then he was falling. He was not ashamed to admit that he did indeed scream like a girl in that moment.

Thankfully, Dean's back was to the ground so he couldn't see it rushing up to greet him, which meant he did see Cas as the angel leapt off the edge and dove right after Dean. There was a blur of tan, then Cas was there, grabbing hold of Dean, and yeah, Dean clung to him. He could have sworn he saw the dark shadows of Cas' wings reflected in the glass windows whizzing by as they unfurled from the angel's back, Dean had a moment to gawk and he quite suddenly wasn't falling anymore.

Dean continued to cling to Cas though, trembling and holding his breath in anticipation for the impact that was no longer coming.

Then Cas whispered, "I've got you Dean," and Dean's breath came rushing out and his senses came back online one by one. He could hear Cas' own heart hammering in his chest; saw the golden stalks of a wheat field swaying in the breeze and, "Holy shit, Cas."

"Yes."

"I mean…there was…_holy shit_." Dean sat up and away from Cas and looked around, "Where are we?"

"Oklahoma."

"You brought me halfway across the country?"

"I wasn't exactly thinking of a destination Dean."

"Yeah well, thank fuck for that. I wouldn't want to be a pancake on the sidewalk if you couldn't make up your mind on where to go." Cas scowled at him and Dean held up his hand, "Sorry Cas, I'm just a little _freaked out_."

"I would never let anything happen to you Dean." Dean nodded and sighed, he didn't even want to think about what would have happened had he and Sam gone on this hunt without their angel buddies like Dean had originally been thinking of doing.

"Thanks Cas. For saving my ass. _Again_." Cas simply nodded as if he hadn't just leapt off a forty-story building, grabbed hold of Dean and whisked him off to a wheat field in the middle of Okla-fucking-homa.

"Sammy okay?"

"Gabriel and Sam have returned to the hotel room."

"We should-" Before Dean could finish his thought Cas had taken hold of his arm and Dean found himself back in the hotel room in Georgia.

After Sam's freak-out and checking Dean over for injuries the four of them headed out to the nearest diner to celebrate a hunt well done and a lack of a Winchester pancake decorating the sidewalk.

"You know, if it hadn't been so terrifying, it would have looked pretty cool Dean. Cas looked so _badass_ leaping off the edge like he did." It may have been beer for a dollar night at the diner and Sam may or may not have had his fair share. Dean rolled his eyes at his brother and took a swig from his own beer; Gabriel had been providing drinks for himself and Castiel all night as well.

Granted their drinks were actual bottles of tequila and rum that they chugged down like water in their attempt to get drunk. Dean was curious though to see a drunken Cas, the stoic angel needed to loosen up somehow.

Two hours later found the four of them wandering down the sidewalk towards the hotel down the block, they'd walked there earlier in the night and Dean was glad for that, he was a little too buzzed to be able to drive. Sam and Castiel were walking ahead of him, both were weaving dangerously while they walked and Sam's head was bent close to Cas' as they talked, giggling occasionally. Cas was still clinging to his bottle of tequila like it was the most precious thing ever; Dean noticed how after Cas drank half of it the bottle would magically refill itself. He had a feeling Gabriel had something to do with that.

Gabriel was about as drunk as Castiel, since they'd had a drinking contest between the two earlier, bottles being downed like shots and a never-ending supply of beer in the meantime for the Winchesters.

It was a good night.

The four of them all collapsed onto the same bed once they got back to the hotel room, Dean was probably the most sober out of all of them but for once, he didn't mind. It just meant he'd be able to remember all of this the next day and be able to tease Sam and Cas about it mercilessly in the future.

"You know, I never thought I'd see the day where our little Cas got drunk." Gabriel muttered, grinning at Cas as he took a swig of his replenished bottle of rum. Cas grunted from where he was being snuggled to death by Sam, Sam clinging to the angel like he was a life sized teddy bear or some shit. Dean was thinking of searching for his phone to take a picture but he couldn't be bothered to move.

"You're finally growing up Cas," Gabriel faked a sniff and wiped an imaginary tear from his eye, "I still remember the day you-" A pillow slamming into Gabriel's head cut him off. Gabriel blinked in shock, Dean grinned at Cas who was scowling at Gabriel, pillow clutched in his hand. Sam giggled and fell over backwards, hands clutching uselessly at Cas' trench coat.

"Oh it is so on bro!" Gabriel grabbed a pillow of his own and whacked Cas over the head with it. Cas let out a grunt, rocked backwards and glared over at Gabriel. Dean leaned forward to check on Cas, make sure he hadn't been knocked stupid but stopped when Cas let out something that could very much be called a war cry and tackled Gabriel off the side of the bed.

Sam cracked up in his drunken glee, laughing so hard tears were streaming down his face while Dean watched the two angels swatting at each other on the floor, cursing each other in Enochian. Cas managed to find his pillow once more and hit Gabriel with so much force the pillow actually burst on contact, white feathers exploding out in a little supernova of fluffy goodness.

Sam laughed harder and Dean worried he'd pass out from lack of oxygen since his face was turning a lovely shade of red.

Another pillow exploded as Gabriel hit Cas on the back with it, more feathers flying into the air and drifting lazily to the ground in some strange parody of snow.

"Hey guys, maybe you should-" Dean was cut off when a pillow hit him in the face. Thankfully, not hard enough to give him a concussion but enough to send him toppling over the edge of the bed and to the floor. Dean glared up at Cas who was standing on the bed, smiling down at Dean, pillow clutched in his hand like it was a sword and not an object meant for sleeping on.

Gabriel took the chance to knock Cas over with a pillow to the back, sending Cas crashing to the floor beside Dean. Dean took his own chance, snatched the pillow out from underneath Sam's head and whacked Cas with it. Cas whacked Dean with his own pillow, Gabriel whacked Cas, Dean whacked Gabriel and Cas had found another pillow and was hitting Gabriel _and_ Dean simultaneously.

Thirty minutes later they were all, once again sprawled over the same bed. Dean was draped over Sam's legs, Cas had his legs draped over Dean and Gabriel was sprawled somewhere above Dean's head. It was actually quite comfortable and not at all awkward, but that was probably the alcohol speaking.

Dean glanced around the room and winced, there were feathers _everywhere_.

"Looks like we sacrificed a chicken in here." Dean muttered, his head landing somewhere on Sam's thigh and his hand colliding with something that he thought was Cas' side.

"Looks like things did after Cas hit what you would call puberty." Gabriel replied.

Dean and Sam cracked up and the last surviving pillow exploded against Gabriel's head.

* * *

Dean eyed the rack of clothes in front of him, turned and stared at Cas, returned to looking at the clothing rack and muttered, "Huh."

"Dean?"

"Turn around." The head tilted. Dean rolled his eyes, grabbed Cas' shoulders, spun him around, and tugged on the back of his pants, trying to see a tag with a size. Cas made a questioning noise, turning his head to look at Dean over his shoulder, not at all perturbed that Dean was practically shoving his hands down the back of Cas' pants.

Dean was trying not to think too hard about it himself.

"Just trying to find out your size Cas." Cas nodded as if all that made perfect sense and continued to stare at the top of Dean's head while Dean tugged, pulled, and searched and oh- Jimmy had apparently worn boxer briefs. Dean tried not to think about _that_ and how they would mold perfectly to Cas'-

"Aha! Found it!" Dean cleared his throat, made a note of the numbers and went searching for pants that were one size smaller, Cas trailing after him like he had been ever since they'd walked into the thrift store. Sam had run off to find himself some new clothes and possibly some new boots while Gabriel had declared them 'lame' and fluttered off for a bit.

"Alright Cas, go ahead and take these into the fitting room and we'll see how they look and if they fit you proper." Cas took the jeans and random shirts Dean had thrust into his arms with a nod and headed over to the fitting rooms tucked into the corner. Dean had figured this was the ideal way to deal with a hangover. Do absolutely nothing all day which had somehow ended up with them in the thrift store to find Cas his own clothes since he was happily experimenting with new outfits every day.

Dean leaned against one of the racks of clothing while he waited for Cas to get himself situated, he could see the angel's legs under the bottom of the door as he stepped out of his suit pants and into the jeans.

Not that Dean was staring or anything.

"You doing okay in there Cas?"

"Yes." Cas stepped out of the small fitting room dressed in the jeans and fitted black t-shirt Dean had selected for him and dear Lord didn't those clothes just hug that body in all the right places.

"Is this suitable Dean?" Cas asked while turning to examine himself in the full-length mirror behind him. Dean's eyes traveled down the length of Cas' back and fixed on what had to be the most amazing ass _ever._ There just weren't words for it.

"Yeah, Cas. That's uh…good." Gabriel appeared next to Dean, gave a whistle and said, "Lookin' good bro! Never would have thought I'd see the day you got out of that stupid trench coat." Cas rolled his eyes at Gabriel over his shoulder and Dean waved him into the fitting room to try on another pair of jeans.

"So…see something you wanna buy there Dean?" Dean glared at Gabriel as the archangel popped a lollipop into his mouth, waggling his eyebrows at Dean. They waited a few minutes until Cas reappeared in a light blue Henley that brought out his eyes amazingly well, not that Dean noticed, and dark wash jeans that looked even better on him than the other pair had. Once again, not that Dean noticed or anything.

"How long you gonna be in Egypt Dean?" Dean looked to Gabriel with a frown, confused before it caught up with him.

"Oh, because of denial isn't a river in Egypt…funny. Ass." Gabriel simply grinned at him, and Dean asked Cas, "How do you like those Cas?"

"This shirt is very soft." He ran his hands over his stomach and if Dean didn't know any better he'd think Cas was trying to lead him on or something, but Cas didn't know how to do shit like that.

"Do these fit as well?" Cas plucked at the jeans, Dean nodded, opened his mouth to respond but heard a quiet, "_God yes_," whispered from behind him. He looked over his shoulder to see a woman standing in one of the aisles, her clothes clutched to her chest while her eyes were trained on Cas, slightly glazed. Dean's glare went unnoticed so he ushered Cas back into the fitting room.

"Try on some of those shirts, I'll find you some other ones." Cas nodded and disappeared into his fitting room while Dean wandered the aisles, picking out random shirts he thought Cas would like. It was just sheer coincidence that most were either black or blue since those were the colors that made Cas' eyes 'pop'.

"How many shirts you planning on ripping off of him Dean-o?" Gabriel asked as Dean passed on his way to take his selections to Cas.

"Bite me."

"You'll end up buying the whole store in that case." Dean chose the highroad and ignored Gabriel and his smirk; he knocked on door and nearly dropped everything when Cas answered it shirtless, his hair sticking in every direction.

Dean could have sworn he heard a quiet whimper come from the woman behind him; he couldn't really blame her either. The sight of Cas' pale chest made Dean want to drop everything and push the angel back against the wall and lick every inch of that smooth, pale skin. Dean managed to tear his eyes away, shoved the clothes at Cas and booked it back to where Gabriel was smirking. The woman was clutching her own clothes against her chest, a slight blush creeping up her cheeks; she caught Dean glaring, gave a hesitant smile and practically ran to the front of the store.

A white napkin waved in front of his face and Gabriel snickered, "You're drooling a bit there kiddo."

"Knock it off, I'm not."

"I know my brother's hot and all, but if you keep it up even his cluelessness is bound to notice."

"Whatever."

"I think he got his looks from me. Runs in the family and all." Gabriel winked at Dean, who scowled and said, "When he comes out tell him to pick whatever he wants, just not all of it." With that, Dean wandered off to search for his brother.

Just as Dean turned the corner he heard Gabriel mutter under his breath, "Bet you wish he'd pick you."

In the end, Cas ended up with three pairs of jeans, six varieties of shirts and Sam had found him a pair of Converse that fit for him to wear. He looked good, different out of his suit and Dean's clothes; he looked amazingly human for once.

The four of them were walking down the sidewalk, stopping occasionally to look into the shops they were passing. Dean intended for them to end up in the diner down at the end of the street for lunch since he was ready for some food.

Dean and Cas were walking quietly behind Sam and Gabriel as the two bickered over the best kinds of chocolate. Sam was set in his ways on liking the kind with nuts while Gabriel was arguing that plain milk chocolate was the best. Dean turned to mention their immaturity to Cas and stopped walking when he realized Cas was no longer walking by his side. The angel was worse than a five year old sometimes, he swore quietly under his breath and turned to look for Cas and found him standing outside one of the stores they'd passed.

It was one of those stores that sold wind chimes and other things for the yard. Dean would have figured the brightly colored spinners would have attracted the angel's attention, especially the ones that were sparkly and reflected the light. But no, what had snagged his attention was the wind chimes tinkling quietly in the soft breeze.

"Cas?" Gabriel and Sam had stopped walking further up the block and were waiting patiently as Cas reached up and poked at one of the chimes, causing it to sing and sway from where it hung.

"You coming Cas?"

Dean chose to ignore Gabriel's, "I bet you wish he was." Dean walked over to Cas who was in the process of moving some more of the wind chimes, a small smile blooming on his face.

"Cas?"

"Yes Dean?"

"You comin' or what?" Cas nodded, gazed at the wind chimes one last time and followed Dean to where their brothers were waiting for them.

"You like the wind chimes huh?" Dean asked as they entered the diner and headed for a booth near the back. Cas nodded, settled in beside Dean in the booth, "The sounds remind me of Heaven." Dean fought down the familiar pang of guilt that tightened in his chest, it was because of him that Cas couldn't go home, that he was losing his powers and becoming more human every week.

For all Dean knew Cas was doing all of this experimenting so if the angel ever was completely human he wouldn't be so lost.

He was thankfully distracted from his wallowing though when Cas asked if he should try a BLT or tuna melt which sparked an argument over tuna and bacon between Sam and Dean. In the end Dean got the BLT instead of his usual burger and gave half to Cas who gave half of his tuna melt in exchange.

Later Dean left the two angels and his brother waiting by the Impala while he went on a dinner and candy run before they headed out of town that night. He paused on the sidewalk in front of the shop with the wind chimes with his arms full of bags of candy and burgers, hesitated and let himself into the shop just as the woman was coming forward to close and lock the door.

"Sorry honey, we're closing up." Dean shot her his most charming smile and said, "I just need to buy one thing, I already know which one. I'll pay in cash if that helps." She hesitated, then reluctantly returned his smile and waited patiently while Dean picked out the small blue wind chime he'd spotted earlier that day, he figured Cas would appreciate it.

"Took you long enough." Gabriel muttered, snatching the bag of jellybeans and M&M's from Dean's hands.

"If you were so desperate for it then you could have gotten it yourself Princess." Gabriel scoffed, rolled his eyes and disappeared into the backseat, Sam folded into the passenger seat and Cas was getting ready to join Gabriel in the back when Dean tugged on his shirt to get his attention.

"Dean?"

"I uh…I got you a little something Cas." Cas' head titled, his brow furrowed a little in question and he waited patiently while Dean pulled the little box from one of the bags he was still holding.

"Here." Cas took it from Dean with a slight upward tilt to his lips and slowly opened it. The way Cas' eyes lit up in the dark and the way his small smile became an actual smile made up for the embarrassment Dean was feeling.

"Thank you Dean."

"No problem." Dean watched as Cas lifted the small wind chime from the box, it twisted and chimed quietly in the still night air and Cas smiled again at Dean. Dean cleared his throat, shifted uncomfortably where he stood and said, "Well, get in the car then, we've got a long drive." Cas nodded, returned the wind chime to its box and climbed into the backseat.

By the time Dean slid in behind the wheel Sam was holding up one of the chocolates Dean had purchased, "I remember these from when we were kids."

"Yeah, I haven't seen one around in a long time." It was one of those chocolates that came in the shape of an orange and required to be whacked against a hard surface to get it open. By unspoken agreement it was decided that Cas would get to do the whacking since obviously he'd never done it before and Gabriel would just hog the whole thing for himself in the end.

Dean watched in the rearview mirror as Cas eyed the orange shaped chocolate in his hands then finally offered, "You have to hit it against something to crack it apart."

"I see."

"And don't you dare hit it against the windows, you'll probably bust one open." Cas nodded and looked around the car. His eyes skirted over the seats, over the windows. The dashboard was too far for him to reach from the backseat, his eyes landed on Dean's head, then Sam's and seemed to decide that he'd probably bust their skulls open if he did it that way.

Finally, Cas nodded to himself, hefted the chocolate in his hand and slammed it against Gabriel's forehead. Gabriel blinked at him, then glared as Cas peeled the foil off and hummed happily as the orange shaped chocolate fell apart into its slices in his palms.

"I understand now."

Dean had to pull over since he was laughing too hard to focus on the road in front of him and Sam had to let himself out of the car to try to get his breath back.

He could really get used to this version of Cas.

* * *

That woman in the thrift store?

Totally would have been me.

I also wish I could draw, cause Cas leaping off the edge of a building makes an amazing picture in my head.


	10. Chapter 10

So, since I went through being sick...I of course had to take it out on someone. That someone naturally turned out to be Cas.

Which turned into this.

I'm suffering from some severe writer's ADD or something, I had the worst time focusing on this long enough to get it out of my head. Seriously. Apparently I also have a porn switch in my head. It repeatedly kept flicking to 'on' while I was writing this. I intended for it to be mildly slashy since we're finally getting to that part of it being a Dean/Cas fic, but it kept turning into some downright dirty porn. Which just...didn't work lol.

_Anyway_. I'm hoping to have the next part to Sweet Tyranny up in the next day or two. I've got about half written, but I wrote it all out of order and in pieces so I've got to piece it all together and fill in the gaps which is just annoying lol.

I also apologize if, towards the end this gets a little...blah. It's 8am, and I refused to go to bed until I got this damn thing finished. So now it's finished and I can finally go to freakin' bed.

Oh. Also. Art.

There is art announcements.

**hedgehogfairy **over on DA made a totally badass drawing from the opening scene in the last chapter. It can be found at:

hedgehogfairy. deviantart. com/ # / d3dj0ge (don't forget your space removals!)

and also **LittleBirdFlower** made some adorable art with Cas and his duckling.

justmiun. deviantart. com/ gallery / # / d3e822w

you guys are seriously amazing for giving me art.

Alright, read on. I apologize for any mistakes lingering around, like I've mentioned, I just want to go to bed lol.

* * *

"Something is wrong with me." Dean jumped at the sudden voice behind him in the previously empty motel room.

"Jesus Cas, a little warning next time." Dean muttered, turning around to glare at the angel. Cas frowned at him and repeated, "Something is wrong with me."

"Like what?" Dean asked, expecting something weird and so simply human it would make him laugh and shake his head at the cluelessness that was Cas. Cas hesitated for a moment before he closed his mouth and sniffed. Dean didn't understand for a moment until it caught up in his brain that Cas sounded _congested_. Really congested.

The angel coughed, sneezed and sniffed again, "I keep doing that."

"Sounds like a cold." Dean muttered, standing up and heading over to Cas. He felt the familiar pang of guilt and regret when he realized the angel was actually sick and because of him. Cas was falling and becoming more and more human as time passed.

"A cold?" Cas sneezed again; face screwing up in his discomfort when he turned back to Dean.

"Yeah, pretty common." Unless you were an angel of course. Cas watched as Dean headed over to Sam's duffel, he was sure they had some decongestants left over from when they had last had colds. Cas sneezed again behind him, made an unhappy noise and sat himself down on the edge of the bed.

"Anything else wrong Cas?"

"What do you mean?"

"Anything other than stuffy nose and sneezing going on?" Dean produced the bottle of Dayquil with an 'ah-ha!' and turned to stare at Cas.

"My throat hurts," he paused to cough, "I can't stop coughing and sneezing and I no longer possess the ability to breathe through my nose." Dean nodded, read the label on the Dayquil bottle and was disappointed to see there were only two pills left.

Sam took that moment to come out of the bathroom finally, toweling his hair dry; the bitch had probably used up all of the hot water too.

"Sam, you need to make a store run."

"Why?"

"Cas has a cold." Sam frowned and turned towards the bed where Cas had fallen into a sneezing fit.

"Oh, hey Cas." Sam managed when Cas was finally done. Cas glowered over at Sam like this was all his fault and sniffed mightily.

"Sam, store. Go." Dean pushed Sam towards the door, which earned him a glare, but Sam went willingly enough when Cas let out a hacking cough and went back to glowering at the wall in front of him. Dean watched him for a moment before finding a nearly empty box of tissues; he yanked a few from the box and handed them over to Cas who simply stared at them.

"You gotta…" Dean trailed off with a sigh, yanked them back, held them over Cas' nose, and said, "Blow." He could remember doing this for Sam when Sam had been four with a cold; he hadn't known how to blow his own nose yet so Dean had done everything for him.

Cas stared at him over the edge of the tissue. Dean rolled his eyes, sighed and demonstrated. Cas eyed him before he took a tissue for himself and blew his nose, Dean was just grateful he didn't have to hold it for him like he'd had to do for Sam.

"I don't feel any better." Cas muttered, throwing the tissue away.

"Might take a few tries buddy. Why don't you change? That'll probably help." Cas shot Dean one his skeptical looks, all squinty eyes and furrowed brow before he sneezed and Dean took pity on him and gathered up the clothes for Cas instead.

Cas took the sweatpants, t-shirt and hoodie from Dean with a sigh and disappeared into the bathroom to change.

By the time Cas reemerged from the bathroom Dean had turned down the blankets on one of the beds, situated the small amount of tissues on the nightstand by the bed and had put _Zombieland_ in the DVD player that had come with the hotel room. Cas stared at the bed then at Dean, but went willingly enough when Dean pushed him towards the bed.

When Sam returned to the room, loaded down with bags from the pharmacy down the street and the local grocery store, Cas was curled into a tight ball underneath the three layers of blankets Dean had piled on top of him. The occasional cough and sneeze made it out from underneath the layers, which was followed by groans of discomfort and unhappy scowly faces as Cas' throat became more raw and irritated.

Sam cast the lump on the bed that was Cas a worried look before he dumped everything on the table. Dean rolled off the bed and joined Sam at the table, gathering up the Nyquil, cough drops and the Vick's shower steam release tabs before heading back over to where Cas was.

Cas wasn't supposed to get sick, so seeing him so miserably sick wrenched something in Dean's chest, filled him with a tight ache and made him wonder if they should have done something different.

He probably should have forced Cas to stay a bit longer after their little trip to the past. It had been three days of watching Cas lay limply on the bed, blood occasionally leaking from his mouth or nose. Three days of both Sam and Dean watching, wondering what they would do if Cas didn't wake up. But Cas did wake up, he'd been dizzy and irritated, had snapped at Dean that it wasn't Dean's fault Cas had ended up like that, had snapped at Sam when Sam had thought it might have been better off if they'd just let Anna kill him.

On the fourth day, despite the brothers telling him it wasn't a good idea since Cas was still weak and shaky, Cas had returned to his search for God, claiming he had too many leads to follow up on. He'd disappeared and they hadn't heard a thing from him until now. He was probably sick because he'd been too weak to keep himself healthy and whatever else.

Dean wasn't pleased with it all, and neither was Sam. For now though, they had to take care of Cas, make him better and make sure he stayed that way. Dean couldn't do this without Cas by his side, the angel's faith in him kept him from completely falling apart, helped him keep himself and his brother together.

Dean sat on the edge of the bed with the realization that Cas was their glue. When shit got too heavy, when everything was going to Hell they always called Cas. Cas who would come with his aura of calm, his blue stare and reassuring voice and make everything better. Make everything make sense again.

Dean pulled the blankets down from where they were covering Cas, "C'mon Cas, let's medicate you."

Cas blinked hazy eyes up at him, "Guh."

"Eloquent. Come on, this Vicks stuff and a hot shower will help you."

After some convincing and maneuvering, Dean ended up in the bathroom with the angel who was sitting on the edge of the bathtub staring at the tie of his pants like they had personally affronted him. Dean chuckled and stood Cas up and undid the knot that Cas himself had not long ago tied, pulled the sweatshirt and shirt off him in one smooth pull and quite suddenly realized what the hell he was doing.

"Um, think you can take it from here Cas?"

Cas' response was leaning forward until his head rested on Dean's shoulder.

Great, there was miles of warm, pale skin on display in front of him and Cas may have been sick but Dean was not _blind_ thank you very much.

Dean sighed, pushed Cas back a little and pushed the sweatpants down around those narrow hips that Dean just wanted to bend down and lick and nibble.

_He was seriously not thinking about this_.

Dean kept his gaze from traveling below waist level, reached around Cas to turn on the shower and tossed one of the Vick's steam things down in the bottom, waiting for the hot water to release all that Vick's smelly goodness into the bathroom.

"In you get Cas." Dean gave him a little shove and Cas stumbled into the stream of water, his shoulders hunched up and his hair flattened down onto his forehead. He looked suspiciously like a drowned cat, especially with that look of betrayal he was shooting in Dean's direction.

"You do know how to shower don't you?" Cas glared at him and Dean nodded, of course Cas knew, he wasn't a complete idiot his angel.

Still, Cas made no move to go about having his shower so Dean sighed, rolled his eyes towards the ceiling, stripped himself down, and joined Cas in the shower. Dean kept his gaze on the tiles of the bathroom wall over Cas' left shoulder, tried not to think about how close he and Cas were standing, how he could easily press up against Cas and how Cas would probably _let him_.

His thoughts were interrupted when Cas held the shampoo bottle over his shoulder for Dean to take.

"I see how it is, going to make me do everything huh?" Cas grunted and leaned against the wall while Dean took the shampoo from him, squirted a generous amount into his hands and buried his fingers into Cas' hair.

Cas let out a pleased hum and leaned his head into Dean's touch; Dean meanwhile tried to keep it all as clinical as possible. Cas was _sick_ and still weak and tired from his trip through time; Dean could do this for him. Dean could and would take care of him, repay him that small amount.

Dean massaged Cas' scalp for a few minutes before rinsing the shampoo out, he was handed the complimentary bottle of shower gel next, and of course, it was shower gel. No bar of soap to keep between his hands and that smooth skin.

Dean started safe and easy with an arm, Cas' eyes were closed and he was practically purring under Dean's touch from his little head massage. Dean grinned at him, despite the situation, and moved his soapy hands over the long, graceful curve of Cas' back, the flat chest, toned stomach and finally those long legs. Dean barely resisted squeezing that wonderfully perfect ass just to see _how_ firm it was when he passed his hands over it, instead he moved Cas into the stream of water to rinse him off.

Dean quickly washed himself, shut the water off and stepped out of the shower, hurriedly toweling himself off while Cas waited patiently. Dean held out a towel for him, but Cas simply stared at it until Dean sighed, tossed it over the angel's head and rubbed quite vigorously. He couldn't help but chuckle at the glare that was waiting for him when he pulled the towel off Cas' head, it was lessened due to the fact Cas' hair was sticking out in every direction.

Cas redressed in his clothes and Dean wrapped himself up in a towel and the two headed out into the hotel room again. Thankfully, Sam didn't comment on Dean's state of dress or the fact that they both had damp hair.

While Dean pulled on fresh pajamas Sam showed Cas how to swallow the pills, gave him a cough drop, which Cas nearly choked on when he almost swallowed it whole.

Finally, he was settled under the covers again, Sam commenting on how warm Cas was and that they should keep an eye on his temperature. Dean nodded his agreement and Sam returned to his book while Dean flipped through the channels on TV. He settled on _Home Alone_ when he discovered nothing else was on.

The movie was about halfway through when Cas shifted out of his slumber and into a semi-conscious state, his head coming to rest on Dean's thigh. Dean's hand automatically went to the back of Cas' neck; he frowned at the heat there, noting Cas' temperature had only gone up instead of evening out or going down.

"Dean."

"Yeah Cas?" Cas didn't say anything, just stared blearily at the TV. Dean waited patiently; thumb absently stroking the soft skin behind Cas' ear.

"I couldn't let her kill Sam." Cas finally muttered. Dean blinked and looked down at the angel in his lap; the blue of his eyes was fever bright from under heavy lidded eyes. Dean squeezed the back of his neck, "I know Cas."

"I could let her kill Sam because," Cas paused to cough a few times and rub his cheek against Dean's thigh, "Because Sam is my friend."

Dean's vision blurred a little and Sam went absolutely still on the other bed, his full attention on Cas.

"You're also my friend Dean."

Dean chewed on his lip, stroked the fine hairs on Cas' neck, "Yeah Cas. You're my friend too buddy." His only friend, because Sam didn't count since Sam was his brother. Hell, Cas was his _best_ friend.

Sam cleared his throat, swiped a hand over his eyes, "Get some rest Cas."

Cas nodded, wrapped an arm around Dean's knees, nuzzled into Dean's thigh and fell into light doze. Dean glanced over to Sam who was still studying Cas, his eyes still a little wet.

"Couldn't have been that much of a surprise Sam, you and Cas get along."

Sam's attention turned to Dean. He was silent for a bit before he said, "I always thought he was like that towards me because of you."

"Me?"

"C'mon Dean. I've always been the boy with the demon blood to the angels. An abomination. Cas knows that you'd do go nuts without me; he knows he needs to keep me safe to keep you from going off the deep end. Figured he only cared about me because he cared about you. I never really thought he actually considered me a friend."

The rest of the night passed in relative peace. Cas only waking himself with the occasional coughing fit or sneeze. They kept him drugged up on Nyquil and if he managed to stay awake long enough the occasional cough drop.

When morning came Dean managed to untangle himself from Cas long enough to be able to get away and get them all breakfast. When he came back to the hotel room Cas had migrated from the bed he'd shared with Dean and was curled up against Sam over on Sam's bed, his head nestled into Sam's side while Sam had a protective arm draped along the angel's back. Dean raised an eyebrow at them and Sam shot him a look that dared Dean to say anything about it, which he didn't for once.

Sam could have some quality time with his newfound friend. Dean could be gracious and share.

Cas was a bit more coherent when they finally managed to rouse him to get some food into him. His voice, usually gravel rough already sounded like he'd gargled acid and eaten some nails for good measure. When Dean took a look at his throat with a flashlight, trying not to laugh at the incredulous look Cas was giving him when Dean told him to say 'ah' and stick his tongue out, he saw Cas' throat was swollen red with the white splotches of strep throat.

"And a cold to boot, you got all the luck Cas." Dean said, returning the flashlight to his duffel. Cas made a mournful facedown at his cup of chicken noodle soup, eyed Dean's pancakes before pushing it all away and went to staring out the window.

To keep the angel entertained Dean taught him how to play poker, since Cas had the best poker face ever and Sam went to the office to see if they had any games he could borrow. He returned with a worn Scrabble box and an old chess set.

Figured Cas would perk up at the chess set.

Dean, who was usually beaten at chess by Sam simply sat back and watched the two play their game and grinned happily when Cas repeatedly destroyed Sam.

"Chess is a very ancient game Sam; it's not new to me." Cas said quietly, he'd agreed with the don't talk so much rule Dean had enforced so Cas wouldn't hurt his throat any more than it was already hurting. Sam looked ready to launch into his questions, but stopped at Dean's glare. They didn't need Cas going into lecture mode on the history of chess when his throat was already destroyed enough.

Instead, the two managed to talk Dean into a game of Scrabble.

Cas won.

Three days later, they deemed Cas well enough for traveling; they packed up the Impala and headed for Bobby's.

"We'll hang out at Bobby's for a few more days, let you finish getting better and all Cas, before we find another hunt and you can go fluttering off to wherever you flutter to."

Cas looked ready to object but Sam interrupted with, "No Cas. You're not going anywhere until you're better. This happened because you went off before you were ready for it. We don't want anything to happen to you alright?"

Cas hesitated then nodded, his attention turning to his hands, which were folded up in his lap. Dean watched him in the rearview mirror, "You're our friend too Cas. You don't have to be alone."

Cas nodded again, his gaze still fixed on his hands, but a small smile was tugging at his lips.

That was enough chick flick moments for him, "When we get to Bobby's we'll help you plot some more ways on how to snatch Bobby's hat."

That earned him a laugh from both his angel and his brother. Win win situation for him.

* * *

Apparently that kind of ending happens when the stuff that's going down in season 6 and what looks to be happening in season 6 is going through my head.

Damnit boys...hug your angel and call him your friend and let him bitch and moan and whine about his civil war already! _God_.


	11. Chapter 11

Wow...has it really been that long since I've updated this? Since April? Damn...really...really sorry about that guys. Time is kinda flying for me and I've been distracted with all the other stories I've been popping out (and freaking out over the lack of progress on my big bang)

So! I bring you an update! Finally! It's probably not as long as it could have been, buuuut well...I hope the content makes up for it all anyway. I was aiming for adorable and schmoopy and instead...this happened.

So I hope it's okay, I hope you enjoy and I hope that it makes up for the time it took me to update. I'll try not to take as long for the next chapter.

Enjoy!

* * *

Dean had never before been so relieved to see that flash of tan in the corner of his eye. Okay, so maybe that one time in Ohio and that other time in Georgia. Then there was that time in Nebraska and again in Illinois and again in the green room and once more on the side of the road in the middle of the night.

So, maybe Dean had been this relieved before, but right now, he'd never been so grateful to have an angel up his sleeve.

_Two_ angels if the sounds of fighting behind him indicated Gabriel fighting the demons that had been behind the brothers while Cas went to work in front of them.

Both Sam and Dean had been working a case, everything about it screamed demon possession from the omens to the behavior of the people in the town. They'd been right but where they'd been _wrong_ was that it wasn't just one demon, but a lot of demons. Dean had lost count at ten, and there were about twice as many in the warehouse right now.

Dean and Sam had walked right into it too, thinking there'd be three demons at most and they could handle that fine, they'd managed to get down a devil's trap before they'd been knocked unconscious and had come to, tied to chairs with a terrifying amount of demons smiling at them.

Lucifer's welcome wagon or some shit like that. Dean had stopped listening to their monologues when the panic had set in.

Then like the holy soldier he was Cas had dropped in right on top of one demon, tossed two into the trap Sam and Dean had managed to set up, and killed another with a swipe of his sword. Dean wanted to cheer and praise everything that was Castiel and his fucking _magnificent _timing, instead he shouted Cas' name when he was dog piled by even _more_ demons and disappeared from Dean's view.

Dean tugged at his restraints, but he'd been trussed up like a Christmas turkey and there was no getting out of it. He could see Sam struggling against his own bindings, eyes roving around the empty space of the warehouse (and why was it always a warehouse?), searching for something to get out and to help the angel.

There was a grunt from underneath the demons, Dean paused and stared as they all went flying back and off Cas who rose up looking in every way the warrior of God that he was, all holy wrath and righteous fury.

Cas usually walked like he'd had a steel rod implanted in place of his spine, he was awkward and never looked like he quite knew what to do with his limbs. Now though, Cas was graceful, dodging and ducking, moving around like this was a dance and his sword was just another extension of himself.

Dean couldn't help but stare, because like this, Cas was beautiful and he looked like the angel he really was.

Gabriel popped up in between Dean and Sam, grinned over at Dean and began undoing the restraints holding Sam in place.

As grateful as he was that Gabriel was working on releasing Sam first, "Cas-"

"Is fine," Gabriel finished with Sam and moved on to Dean, "Cas is a feisty little Seraph Dean; he's doing what he was _made_ to do. He's been in worse situations before and he handled himself just fine then too." Dean's hands were freed and he stood, unsure of what to do, he usually would have helped, but Cas currently was managing just fine on his own.

"Well, I shouldn't let him have all the fun." Gabriel said with a grin before disappearing and reappearing directly behind Cas, the two angels moving perfectly in sync to one another.

Dean had never been so transfixed before, and to his horror, so turned on.

The last two demons fell, one with a flash of brilliant white light with Gabriel's hand fused to its forehead, the other with Cas' sword embedded in its back as it tried to make a run for it.

Cas retrieved his sword and hid it off to wherever he stashed it. He and Gabriel exchanged smiles that were fueled purely on adrenaline while Sam and Dean just watched on, jaws slack and eyes wide.

Then Cas was turning and glaring at Dean, Dean's mouth snapped shut and he swallowed reflexively. The last time Cas had looked at him like that he'd threatened to toss Dean back into Hell.

Gabriel smiled, patted Cas on the shoulder and said, "Sam and I will stay and tend to the survivors, you handle Dean."

Dean opened his mouth to protest, he didn't need _handling_, but Cas vanished from view, reappeared directly in front of Dean, gripped his arm and Dean found himself dragged through whatever it was angels flew through.

Dean landed a lot less gracefully than he usually did; probably thanks to the fact Cas was _shoving_ him.

Cas shoved him again and Dean stumbled back, trying to find his footing, "Cas-"

"You need to be more careful Dean," Cas snapped, shoving Dean again which Dean was getting really sick of, "Lucifer will not hesitate to kill you, and if that happens I won't be able to bring you back this time."

Another shove and Dean's back was hitting the far wall, a very pissed off, very _hot_ angel pressed against his front.

Usually Dean would have something to say right now, some snide comment or some remark on Cas' personal space issues. The way Cas was looking at him though, all fondness mixed with frustration and a hell of a lot of anger had Dean's tongue tying itself up into knots and something twisting in his gut. It didn't help that his mind was still back to how Cas had looked in the warehouse, moving with that deadly precision and grace.

Then Cas was kissing him.

Dean's mind sputtered to a stop, his heart attempted a suicide leap out of his chest and time seemed to slow.

Then his mind started working again and the only thought spinning around was _Cas was kissing him_.

It was messy and a little painful with how their teeth clacked together and how Cas' nose bumped against his, but holy hell was it hot.

Dean released the death grip he had on Cas' trench coat, slid one hand over that wonderful chest and the other into the soft hair at Cas' neck, tilted Cas' head to a better angle, and Dean really wished he didn't need to breathe. He pulled away a little, stared at Cas who was staring at him, eyes wide and lust blown.

"Cas-"

He kissed Dean again, cutting off whatever bullshit Dean was about to spew. There was a hint of tongue and all Dean could think about was getting Cas naked and spread out on the bed.

He pushed at Cas' shoulders a little, trying to get him to back up the few steps to the bed and amazingly, Cas went, especially when Dean muttered, "Bed. Now."

The two tumbled back to the bed, Dean slotting himself between Cas' legs while he pushed and pulled at the ridiculous amount of layers the angel was wearing. He'd probably worn his old getup just to annoy Dean if it came down to this.

"Get on with the mojo and get us naked."

Cas opened his mouth to speak and was interrupted by a tiny voice singing, "_The jig is up, the news is out, they finally found me, the renegade who had it made-_" Cas pulled his phone from his pocket and threw it to the other side of the room.

Dean raised an eyebrow, "Renegade? Really?"

"It was Gabriel's doing." Dean snorted, then groaned when there was suddenly glorious skin on skin contact.

"I like where your mind is at Cas." Cas smiled up at him and pulled him down for another kiss.

An indeterminate amount of time later there was a hesitant knock on the door and Sam's voice asking, "Is it okay to come in now?" Dean snorted and looked over at Cas who was staring up at the ceiling with a look of pure bliss on his face.

They were spread out sideways on the bed, sweaty and panting for breath. Cas had bite marks that were slowly fading from his chest, shoulders and neck and his hair was in an even bigger mess than usual. Dean himself wasn't much better, he had his own bite marks on his shoulders and neck and he was pretty sure there were scratches going down his back.

When neither responded, Sam slowly opened the door, Cas waved a hand and the door slammed shut before Sam could stick his head in. Dean chuckled and Sam said, "Alright then, I'll just…get my own room for the night."

When Dean's heart finally felt that it wasn't going to gallop out of his chest he looked over at Cas who slowly turned his head to match Dean's stare.

"I thought you said you were a virgin." Dean finally muttered. Cas smirked at him in such a way that reminded Dean of Gabriel and said, "I've been watching humans for a very, very long time Dean. I've seen many things that even you haven't done. I just had no…practical experience."

"Kinky bastard."

One of Cas' eyebrows went up and Dean grinned at him, "Always the quiet ones."

Cas huffed and sat up while saying, "I would like a shower now."

"Okay. Go for it." Cas stood and headed for the bathroom, he paused and looked back at Dean, eyebrows raised expectantly, "I mean for you to join me Dean."

Dean hopped off the bed and raced after Cas with a, "_Hell yes_."

Dean thought the morning after would be awkward, that he would wake up and Cas would be gone or they would stare at each other and move on and that would be that. Dean honestly had no idea what to make of this, he'd been struggling with battling down his growing attraction to Cas because it was _Cas_ and Cas was a freakin' _angel_.

Dean shouldn't have worried though since he woke up with Cas' mouth wrapped around Dean's dick, which by the way, was possibly the best way to wake up _ever_. He looked down at that dark head of hair and saw Cas was looking up at him, corners of his eyes crinkled with his amusement.

"I'm a bad influence on you man." Cas simply hummed and went to _town_.

Dean thought that maybe breakfast would be awkward, but it was nothing out of the ordinary outside of Cas sitting next to Dean instead of across from him. And Gabriel was smirking at them over his plate of pancakes while Sam was avoiding eye contact.

Gabriel filled them in while they ate, letting them know all the demons in the town had been taken care of and the people still alive after being possessed had been returned to their families or put into the hospital. When they finished eating Gabriel sent the Winchesters in the direction of a new hunt and the angels themselves went off to do a little looking into it themselves, leaving Sam and Dean on their own in the Impala.

Fifty miles from town Sam finally asked, "So…are you and Cas…like…together now?"

"What are we in middle school?"

"Dean."

"I don't know…maybe?" He could feel Sam's stare drilling into the side of his face; Dean turned and glared at him.

"We had sex. Once. Well…a couple times, but this is the first time for that to happen. I don't _know_ Sam."

"You know he loves you right?"

"Jesus, Sam."

"Well he does." Dean rolled his eyes but didn't say anything. He'd figured Cas did, since it was just how Cas was. He was an angel and angels were made to love, plus he'd pulled Dean from Hell, rebelled against his family for Dean. He sighed and muttered, "I know he does Sam."

"Do you love him _back_?"

Dean sighed and snapped, "What's with the interrogation?"

Sam eyed him for a minute, "You do don't you. You're just scared."

"I'm not _scared_."

Sam rolled his eyes and muttered, "Whatever. Long as you're happy Dean."

Dean rolled his own eyes and reached forward to turn the volume up on the radio, drowning out whatever Sam might have needed to say.

They hit Minnesota a few minutes past midnight, Sam was passed out in the passenger seat and Dean was close to doing the same himself. They were still a few hours out from their intended target but Dean wasn't willing to end up with the Impala wrapped around a pole in the middle of the nowhere to get there.

Cas was waiting by the Impala with a barely conscious Sam using the angel as his support when Dean walked out of the hotel office; Dean shook his head at the two and headed for the trunk to get their things. When he turned around Cas had disappeared with his brother and the door to their room was standing open. The angel should have been a ninja in a previous life.

"Thanks Cas." Cas nodded at Dean from where he had been _tucking_ Sam into bed, Sam smiled in his sleep and nuzzled into his pillow as Cas passed a hand over his hair. Dean shook his head, life was weird when an angel was tucking Lucifer's vessel into bed.

When Dean emerged from the bathroom, Cas was sitting at the small table in the room, attention fixed out the window.

"What? I don't get to be tucked in too?" Cas glanced over at Dean as he crawled under the covers.

"Would you like me to?"

"_No_." The light flicked off and Dean grunted his thanks and was about the drop off into unconsciousness when he felt the other side of the bed dip down.

"Cas?"

"You've expressed your desire for me to pretend to sleep if I'm to stay in the room with you overnight."

"Well you don't have to-" Dean was cut off when six feet of half-naked angel suctioned to his side.

"Dude, I don't cuddle." Even though it felt nice to have Cas' leg draped over his, Cas' head on his chest and an arm wrapped around his waist.

"Don't think of it as cuddling then." Cas mumbled, _nuzzling_ Dean's chest. Dean sighed, letting the world know he was against this (even though he wasn't) and draped his arm around Cas' shoulders, pulling the angel a little bit closer.

"Not a word to anyone." Dean could have sworn he felt Cas smirk against his chest, but Dean was too busy succumbing to sleep to care.

When he woke in the morning, he and Cas had shifted in during the night. Cas' back was pressed to Dean's chest, their legs were tangled together underneath the sheets, Dean had buried his nose in Cas' hair and somehow his fingers had slipped in underneath the waistband of Cas' boxers.

"You two are adorable." Dean cracked an eye open and shifted enough to glare at his brother with that eye.

Sam grinned, "I'll be in the diner, doing research, whenever you two decide to join me."

His brother wasn't as smooth as he thought he was, but Dean didn't care. Cas was warm and pressed against him and not seeming to mind that Dean's thumb was absently stroking the soft skin of his navel given how he wiggled his hips back against Dean.

"Your brother took a picture earlier." Cas muttered, as he not so subtly pushed Dean's hand further down into his boxers.

"The little bitch." Cas hummed and continued pushing Dean's hand down to where he wanted it.

"You're not very subtle Cas," Cas simply kept his eyes shut as a smirk tugged at his lips. Dean figured it was the least he could do to repay Cas for the previous morning.

Several hours later, they were joining Sam in the diner down the street for a late breakfast. Dean snatched the phone from his brother's hands as he passed and slid into the booth across from him, Cas joining him moments later.

"Dean!"

"Just taking care of something Sammy, don't worry." He found the picture his brother had taken earlier that morning. He would never admit to finding the way he and Cas were curled up together adorable either. Instead, he quickly sent the picture to his own phone, deleted all evidence from Sam's phone and handed it back over; smiling at the bitchface he was receiving in return.

They'd just finished ordering their food when Cas perked up beside Dean, head tilted and eyes far away, if he'd been a dog there would have been perked ears and a wagging tail.

"Cas?" Cas was silent for another moment before he blinked and said, "Gabriel handled the hunt for you."

"So we did all that damn driving for nothing? Seriously?"

"I asked Gabriel to handle it for you. It was a witch and I'm under the distinct impression that you dislike witches Dean." Dean sighed and nodded, he couldn't really argue with logic like that.

"Well, thanks for that Cas." Sam smiled at the angel, and then smirked at Dean. Dean kicked at his shins under the table and Cas' hand landed on Dean's thigh. Figured that once he introduced the angel to sex he'd be going after it all the damn time like a teenager. Not that Dean was complaining.

He _definitely _wasn't complaining three hours later when Cas was perched on top of him in some kind of position that should not have been possible but damn did it feel all sorts of heavenly.

And he really wasn't complaining when both Gabriel and Sam popped into the middle of the room, Sam letting out some ungodly sound and clapped a hand over his eyes as he raced for the door shouting, "Brain bleach! So much brain bleach!"

Gabriel tilted his head a little, eyed Cas' position and said, "Huh, didn't know you could do that. I may have to get some pointers from you bro."

Cas situated himself into a more normal position, much to Dean's dismay, glared over his shoulder at Gabriel and growled, "Out."

Gabriel smirked, winked at Dean, "Figured you'd have been the catcher Dean."

"_Gabriel_."

"Alright, alright I'm going." With a click of his fingers, Gabriel was gone and the door Sam had left open his haste to get out was closed.

Dean blinked up at Cas and said, "Well, if that wasn't a mood killer-"

Cas glared down at him with a look that clearly said, _it wasn't now shut up and hang on_.

So Dean did.

Best. Night. Ever.

* * *

like I said, a lot pornier than I intended.

But I hope it was worth it and enjoyable!


End file.
